


Disarm

by Kangofu_CB



Series: Barton's Halfway House for Ex-Brainwashed Assassins [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes & Clint Barton Friendship, Canon-Typical Violence, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Gen, If Bucky Barnes escaped from Hydra early, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Canon, SHIELD, SHIELD Agent Clint Barton, SHIELD agent Natasha Romanov, Slow Burn, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, guys I'm not kidding they don't even get together in this first section, the 90s fashion and music choices, the MCU reimagined completely, the slowest burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-09-27 12:16:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20407612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/pseuds/Kangofu_CB
Summary: Howexactlydid Hawkeye recruit the notorious Black Widow?The answer may surprise you.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the start of a huge project for me, one that's super close to my heart and that I've been working on for a long time. It started out as "What if the secret family on Clint Barton's secret farm was actually Bucky Barnes and their adopted murder children?" and here we are. 
> 
> This fic spans from roughly 1998 until whenever the story itself ends, but it's plotted out all the way through Age of Ultron. IW/Endgame threw me for a loop and I'm still working through how/if I want to handle those storylines. 
> 
> This is going up in five separate parts that deal with different periods of time in Clint, Bucky, and Natasha's lives. This first section is the very beginning of their friendship, and there are no romantic pairings. I don't like to lead people on, but ultimately this is a Winterhawk fic with a Clintasha bromance, and I hope you all like it.

September 22, 1998

Three weeks in Rome had Clint pretty convinced he hated it. 

The weather had taken an unseasonable turn for the cooler, highs hovering in the upper 50s (mid-teens, for the locals, Clint had to remind himself) but before that it had been perfect. Dry and warm but not hot, the best sort of weather for tourism. 

So it wasn’t the weather. 

And he had an apartment to himself, no team shadowing his every move, no agents questioning his choices in cover, clothes, or contacts.

So it wasn’t the company. 

Mostly, it was the boredom. 

International man of mystery wasn’t quite as enticing as it had first sounded when Coulson had cornered him three years ago, and offered him the choice between remaining a burgeoning assassin and wanted fugitive, or working for S.H.I.E.L.D and doing basically the same thing, but with government sanction. A choice that really hadn’t been a choice at all, and Clint had honestly jumped at the chance. 

After everything with Trickshot, everything with Barney, Clint had been peddling his skills the only way he knew how, trying to vet his jobs but unable to be terribly choosy, and exchanging a life of crime for a life of… super secret spy agent whatever guy had seemed easy. Tempting, even. 

Of course, it hadn’t been anything like that simple. There had been more training, hand to hand combat - Clint’s quick and dirty fighting style, learned at Barney’s hands and honed at the circus, had lent him a surprising advantage, even against trained agents - along with more weapons than just a bow. It had been rapidly apparent that Clint worked best independently, and not just because he was accustomed to working alone. They’d gone over how to blend into a crowd, a skill Clint had already possessed but for a very different kind of crowd, a million other little and big things that had quickly made him a valuable asset to S.H.I.E.L.D and just as quickly alienated him from his fellow agents. He fell outside the normal chain of command. He’d cycled through half a dozen handlers before Coulson had stepped in and ensured that all his missions went through Coulson and Coulson alone, that the only person Clint reported back to was Coulson himself, and while that had smoothed out some of the working speed bumps, it had only served to isolate Clint further.

Which, to be honest, was perfectly fine with Clint. Three years in and junior agents still avoided him in the locker room, but now it was because he had a reputation as a marksman and a spy, and the respect of Fury’s unofficial right hand man. Clint had earned that respect and there were a handful of agents Clint considered friends - like Coulson and Morse - so it wasn’t all bad. He even enjoyed it some days, and anything was better than where Barney and Trick had intended him to end up. 

Of course, all of that culminated in being sent on this mission. This shit-show, bullshit, annoying as fuck mission that Clint was now nearly convinced was either a wild goose chase or someone toying with him. Whether that someone was Fury or a rival intelligence agency was yet to be seen.

Clint’s assignment - _should he choose to accept it_, his mind had helpfully added during the briefing - was to track down and eliminate the Black Widow. 

The Black Widow was a rumor, at best. Everyone knew the Red Room existed, though few had any concrete evidence of the nature of it or even what government it catered to, and the Widow was their favored graduate. Young, female, and deadly at a meter or a mile. Precious little evidence existed about her, only that she’d shown up on the playing field around the time of Clint’s recruitment with the kind of deadly efficiency that made her a high level target. 

She wasn’t number one on S.H.I.E.L.D’s list, but only because there was a ghost story or two that superseded her. 

And Clint had been sent to take her down. 

Privately, Clint wondered if Fury was finally tired of him and had decided to put him out of his misery in the most painful way possible. 

Intelligence suggested she was here, in Rome, waiting on a target of her own, though none of the sources seemed to agree on exactly who or what that target might be. Clint had been wandering the city for weeks, waiting on a trace of her to crop up, a lead worth pursuing. He’d made a few contacts in the meantime in the way that he liked to do, in the underbelly of the city; even those sources had nothing new to add to Clint’s growing pile of inconclusive evidence. 

But there’d been traces. Flashes of red hair in a crowd, green eyes peering over dark lenses as she disappeared around corners faster than Clint could track her. She’d made eye contact with him half a dozen times, but never for long enough to confirm she was more than just a pretty woman with distinctive hair. Clint couldn’t even be certain it was the same woman he saw - even in Italy, redheads weren’t _that_ unusual.

But this hair was the shiny color of a penny, and it looked to be the same length and approximate styling every time, and it was just enough bait for Coulson to insist he keep dangling here, waiting for more. 

Clint, quite honestly, was sick and fucking tired of it. 

Today alone he’d caught at least three glimpses, which was more than his running tally so far in one day, but he’d been stomping around the tourist traps for the last four hours and hadn’t caught so much as a flash of red out of the corner of his eye. 

He decided to call it a day.

Coulson could suck his dick.

On his way back to his cramped, shitty, base-of-operations flat, he stopped for a coffee. To Clint's complete and utter disappointment the pizza sucked in Italy, but the coffee... man. 

He wanted to marry the coffee. 

Two steps into his S.H.I.E.L.D-acquired apartment, he knew something was very, very wrong. 

The apartment was too still, too flat, with a vague aura of danger that had him reaching for the gun tucked against his back.

“Ah, ah Agent Barton,” chided a husky, feminine voice. “I’m just here to talk.”

Clint blinked into the darkness, his eyes adjusting faster than most, to find a petite redhead perched gingerly on the edge of the sagging sofa. 

She was undeniably, _painfully_ young. If she were even eighteen, Clint would eat a shoe; at twenty-seven, Clint suddenly felt ancient. She looked the part too, dressed in baggy overalls and a clingy, midriff-baring tee, with a loose flannel tied around her waist. Her hair was braided down one side, and she could have passed for as young as fourteen, if she really worked the angle.

Clint wondered if the emphasis on her youth was deliberately for him, or just part of her cover.

She also exuded a sense of deadly capability that actually alarmed him, and he decided the look was for her cover, but the insight into her capabilities was for his benefit. 

“Black Widow,” he said flatly. He didn’t take his hand off the gun, but he made no move to actually draw it. That, he knew, was probably a very fast way to end up dead as hell. “I’d offer you something to drink, but I wasn’t expecting guests.” He waggled his coffee cup as though he’d have brought more had he known. 

She hummed a little thoughtfully. “So sorry to drop in unannounced,” she demurred. But she watched him sharply, waiting for something. He didn’t know what.

There could be nothing good about coming home to the Black Widow in your living room, right?

Clint sighed. “What did you want to talk about?” he said, instead of his hundreds of other questions. He wasn’t exactly planning to go down without a fight, but he also wasn’t too sure of his chances in this scenario. Who knew how long she’d been here, waiting for him and making preparations? Clint didn’t leave incriminating evidence lying about, but there were weapons hidden in strategic places, and he’d had a slim file of information tucked away in a vent where a casual snooper wouldn’t think to look.

He had no doubt she had looked. 

Sure enough, she leaned forward, telegraphing her movements, and flipped open a file on the coffee table. Clint recognized his own briefing, his own notes and handwriting. With her other hand, she flicked the power button on a battered blue CD player that Clint absolutely didn’t recognize. 

The first strains of some pop hit dripped out of the speakers, and Clint winced. Of all the shitty music in the world, that’s what the fearsome Black Widow had decided would be good background cover noise for their conversation.

She raised an eyebrow at him, oddly judgemental, and he shrugged defensively. 

Boy bands weren’t really his thing.

The Widow obviously decided to ignore his clearly superior taste in music, because she kept flicking through the file on the table, reading the shoddy notes he’d been taking since his arrival at the beginning of the month. There were shorthand transcripts of conversations, both with his own contacts and S.H.I.E.L.D-sanctioned informants, along with logs of his calls to Coulson and the few, grainy surveillance photos he’d managed to grab, acting the awkward, gawking tourist. 

She slid one out with her fingertip, eyed it carefully, and then slipped it into the pocket of her overalls. 

“You have… an unconventional relationship with your handler,” she said, apropros of nothing. 

Clint shrugged. “We work well together.”

She made a noncommittal noise. 

Clint, very slowly, released his grip on the butt of his gun, and reached out to snag one of the small wooden chairs that accompanied the tiny breakfast table in the kitchenette. He spun it in front of him, straddling the seat so that he could still easily go for the gun, or use the chair as a weapon if necessary. He leaned on the backrest, arms deceptively loose. 

“I need a favor,” she said finally, flipping the folder shut. 

Both of Clint’s eyebrows went up. “Not really what I was expecting to hear, but you have my attention.”

“I need to make two people disappear.”

Clint scratched at the back of his head. “Yeah, I don’t really do that sort of thing anymore.”

She rolled her eyes, and it was the first crack in her facade that Clint could see, and that, somehow, made him even more nervous. It almost humanized her, made her something more than a trained killer, and that meant she wasn’t worried about him telling anyone anything about her. “I don’t need any help killing people,” she announced, as though Clint were an idiot.

Which, fair.

“I need to make them literally disappear. As though they don’t exist. You have the connections I need to make that happen.”

Clint… did have those connections. Even if she didn’t mean S.H.I.E.L.D - and he had a feeling she didn’t - Clint maintained some of his old contacts. People who could get him papers or act as fences or any number of shady or immoral things. Insurance, back up, whatever you wanted to call it, Clint had never quite been able to let go of the false sense of security it gave him. 

“I find it hard to believe the Black Widow can’t muster up some false identities and a safehouse for a couple of people,” he said, instead. 

Something about her face hardened. “Red Room has resources. The Black Widow is merely a tool in their hands.” She paused, cocking her head. “This isn’t something I can hand over to them.”

The barest scuff of a shoe in the musty kitchenette reached Clint’s ear, and it was only at that moment that he made the horrifying realization that she hadn’t come to his apartment alone. Someone loomed out of the darkness, tall, with broad shoulders and the glint of cold metal and-

The fucking Winter Soldier was in his kitchen.

In his kitchen and dressed like he’d ransacked Kurt Cobain’s closet, wearing baggy, ripped jeans, a too-large white t-shirt, and a plaid flannel shirt of his own, cuffed low at the wrists so that only the glint of his metal hand showed beneath the sleeve. WIth a glove, or tucked into a pocket, a casual observer would likely never even notice the shine of the metal, and if they did, they’d probably assume some kind of bracelet or glove. He was holding something close to his chest with the other arm but Clint was too distracted by the shining metal to really focus on it.

Both assassins looked disturbingly normal. Unremarkable, unlikely to attract attention, and therefore totally able to slip into and out of Clint’s shitty apartment building with none of the other tenants taking note.

The Soldier also looked surprisingly young, a fact that Clint tucked away in the back of his mind for later perusal. The man was credited with enough assassinations, going back enough years, that he should be pushing retirement age, and yet he looked no older than Clint.

None of it made any sense, but one thing was clear:

Clint was so very, very fucked. 

“Aw, fuck,” Clint muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face. 

When he blinked his eyes back open, the Soldier was more visible in the dimly-lit living room, looking just as imposing and deadly as all the stories had ever implied, despite his casual grunge attire, and he was holding-

He was holding a baby?

“What the fuck?” Clint gaped at them. At the tiny human curled up, asleep, in the crook of the Soldier’s right arm, at the steely glare on the Soldier’s face, at how tense and coiled he was holding himself, waiting…

Waiting on Clint, he suddenly realized. 

Clint turned his attention back to the Widow. “So… you want me to help your what? Your murder-assassin buddy? Your lover? And your baby? Disappear into the nethers? That’s- that’s the plan here?” Clint steadfastly ignored the rising note of hysteria in his voice. 

The Soldier made a sound that could be anything honestly, but something about it made Clint think it was amusement, rather than annoyance. 

“He’s not my lover,” the Widow said, exasperated. “And that’s not my baby. We’re…”

“Friends,” the Soldier said, into the awkward pause that followed. “We’re friends.”

Right. Because that made sense. The Winter Soldier and the Black Widow, BFFs 4eva. Got it. 

Clint wondered if he was dreaming; he pinched the underside of his bicep, hard, just to make sure. The smarting pain of it convinced him he wasn’t asleep after all. 

The baby squirmed in the Soldier’s arm, made a soft, sleepy sound that burrowed its way deep enough into Clint’s chest that he knew, already, he was going to agree to this idiocy. 

“Okay, but why?” Clint said, hearing the note of resignation in his own voice. 

The Widow opened her mouth to answer, but the Soldier made a sharp gesture with his left hand, and she subsided. 

“They don’t get to do to him what they did to us,” the Soldier said, and his voice was gruff and hoarse, like it was dragged out over a sea of broken glass and tripwires, like he hadn’t used it often enough or had been parched in the desert for days. “I’m past the point of caring what they do to me,” he continued, as though what he had already said wasn’t devastating enough. As though Clint couldn’t look at how very young the Widow was and know generally, if not exactly, what must have happened to her to make her into a ruthless killing machine in her teenage years. “But I can’t watch them do it to him too.”

“Why- why me?” Clint asked, instead of touching that disaster with a ten foot pole. 

“Oh, we’ve been watching you,” the Widow said, like that wasn’t a terrifying statement in and of itself. “Left breadcrumbs to see what you would do with them. Observed from a distance.”

“Stole your file,” the Soldier added. 

Clint made a mental note to steal his own file.

The Widow nodded in agreement. “You’re efficient but not vicious, you don’t kill children, and you take care to avoid collateral damage. I know you’ve refused orders-” and boy was that an understatement, but if they’d got his files, they knew all of it and more, “-yet they continue to utilize you. It seems perhaps that the agency you work for aren’t complete and utter bastards.”

“Well, we aren’t turning children into trained assassins,” Clint shot off, unable to help himself, “so yeah if that’s the bar, we’re ahead of the curve.”

She smirked. “Yes, there is that. The reality, _Hawkeye_, is that my options are limited and my time is running out. Will you help me or not?” And if she knew his call sign, then she definitely had access to all his relevant secrets.

Clint heaved a sigh that felt like it was dredged up from his very _bones_. 

“I’m willing to make a deal,” she went on.

“Natalia,” the Soldier growled.

“_Yasha_,” she hissed back, and she frowned so severely that even the Winter Soldier shut up. 

Clint filed the names away in his head for later. _Natalia and Yasha_. It was more than they’d ever had on the Widow or the Soldier before.

“What kind of deal?” Clint asked, cautiously. 

“I’m willing to exchange myself. My skills, knowledge, whatever your agency might be interested in, so long as my… friend, and the boy disappear into obscurity and S.H.I.E.L.D never knows they exist. That’s the deal, take it or leave it.”

“But _why_?” Clint said, helplessly. 

“I’ve got red in my ledger, and I’d like to wipe it out.”

“And him?” Clint jerked his chin towards the Soldier. 

“He’s different,” the Widow - Natalia - responded.

“And the baby?” Clint asked.

“He’s mine,” the Soldier warned. 

Clint held his hands up in defense. “Look, I’m just askin’. You guys are asking me for a lot here, and you want me to take it all on faith. It’s a lot to swallow, alright?”

The Soldier and the Widow exchanged a look, one that Clint interpreted as best he could. It seemed pretty clear to him that the Soldier thought they were wasting their time, but the Widow disagreed. Clint leaned his chin on the back of the chair and watched them. If, by some miracle, he managed to survive this encounter and debrief on it, he wanted to be able to give S.H.I.E.L.D as much information as possible. Natalia’s name, the way her face looked, the way her voice sounded. The soldier’s distinct gait, probably related to the weight of the metal arm. His face looked vaguely familiar to Clint, like he should recognize it from somewhere, but he couldn’t place it. 

Before Clint could rally his thoughts, put together what he thought he knew with the rumors he’d heard and the information staring him in the face, the baby made another tiny, fussy sound, and the Soldier - Yasha, or whatever his identity of choice was - hefted the kid up onto his shoulder and began rocking him, making a small shushing sound under his breath and swaying back and forth. It was an instinctual move, Clint thought, born of previous practice, an unconscious response to a fussy baby and not something he’d have ever, in a million years, have expected from the twentieth century’s most notorious and feared assassin. 

It was also, possibly, the cutest goddamn thing Clint had ever seen in his _life_.

He was so fucking fucked. 

Coulson was going to be _so pissed_ if he ever found out about this encounter. 

Because Clint, dumbass, soft-hearted idiot that he was, he was actually going to do this stupid shit. He was going to help the _goddamn Winter Soldier_ and his _baby_ go into hiding. And instead of eliminating the Black Widow he was gonna- what? Turn her over to S.H.I.E.L.D apparently, where they could… pump her for information?

God, none of that sat right with him. 

The baby fussed a little more, and the Soldier lifted the gleaming metal hand to rub soothing circles over its back, and Clint felt whatever remained of his resistance disappear. 

He was so fucking _stupid_. 

Of course, there was the added inducement that if he didn’t agree to this absolute insanity, they might kill him in his own living room. That should probably factor more heavily into his decision-making process, but mostly it was the baby. Clint could be honest with himself about that, at least. He didn’t have to admit it out loud or anything, but it was there. 

In the background, Meredith Brooks started playing and that seemed both irritatingly accurate and oddly prophetic. 

_But you look at me like maybe_

_I'm an angel underneath_

“Fine,” he sighed, slumping onto the back of the chair. “Fuck. Fine.” Clint wasn’t anything like an angel, but he also couldn’t just abandon them, especially not a baby.

“You will help us?” Natalia - the Widow - fuck, Clint was going to have to come up with better names for them or settle on something to call them, that was for damn sure - asked, cautious and still tense. 

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Clint grumbled, trying to release all the tension from the muscles he’d been holding ready, anticipating violence. 

She turned a triumphant look on the Soldier, who rolled his eyes, even as he continued bouncing the baby just slightly, still gently shushing it. 

Clint only had one place he could possibly hide anyone though, or at least only one place that S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t know about, and he sighed again. He only had it because he’d seen it come up on foreclosure and bought it on a whim, the last of his assassin-for-hire money going into the investment, just before S.H.I.E.L.D. started paying him and sending him out on their personal assassination missions. The farm Clint had grown up on - well, for a degree of growing up - before the first of many bad decisions had been made in the form of _running away to join the circus_, and it was his now. Well, it was Frank Binn’s farm now, but Clint had purchased it sight unseen and was only kind of certain it was habitable. 

Regardless, it was in the middle of nowhere Iowa, where absolutely _no one_ was going to be looking for a notorious assassin, and it could surely be repaired, whatever state it was in now. 

Hopefully.

Apparently, it was time for the prodigal son to return home, or some shit.

Fuck, but Clint hated Iowa. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: I won some absolutely beautiful art to go with this fic from MeganeDoodleDog (aka Via) on Tumblr, who was a delight to work with and drew me a gorgeous comic-style art piece to go with this chapter!
> 
>   



	2. Chapter 2

Clint scrubbed his hands over his face and wondered how he got himself into these things.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, what am I working with here?”

The Widow and the Soldier both stared at him. The baby made a soft, sleepy sound, as if to remind him of exactly why he’d agreed to this. 

Clint sighed. “Listen, you’re defecting from a known terrorist organization. You have papers, you have passports, what?”

“I’m escaping,” The Soldier interrupted him. “She’s defecting.”

Clint blinked between the two of them. The Soldier was almost smirking and the Widow looked like she very much wanted to roll her eyes, but was far too dignified to do it. So, Clint did it for her.

“Alright, you’re escaping, she’s defecting, the baby is singing a show tune, who’s got identification papers?”

“I do,” the Widow said, “but they’re Red Room sanctioned.”

And therefore useless. 

The Soldier didn’t say anything.

Neither did the baby. 

“Jesus Christ,” Clint muttered. “Okay, I can fix this. I think.”

Clint was pretty sure he had enough contacts in the area to procure a couple of blank passports and some identification. 

“Why are you even in Rome?” he finally thought to ask. 

The Widow smirked. “I’m looking for him,” she jerked her head at the Soldier. 

The Soldier shrugged a little. “I’m hiding from her.”

“I hate both of you,” Clint announced. “Do either of you have any cash? Passports cost money.” Good passports cost a lot of money, actually. More than Clint had in his petty cash slush fund at the moment, though not more than he could probably get his hands on with enough effort. 

“Money is no problem,” The Widow assured him, shrugging one shoulder. 

“You got names?” Clint asked.

The two assassins exchanged a look and then turned blank, expectant faces on Clint. After a second, the Soldier hefted the baby up a little higher.

“Been callin’ him Grant,” the Soldier said, gruffly.

“What have you been calling yourself?” Clint couldn’t help but ask. 

“The Asset,” the Soldier told him, cutting his eyes back towards the Widow.

Clint sighed. 

*

_Natasha Marie Romanoff_.

_James Tomas Romanoff._

_Nathan Grant Romanoff._

Getting the passports had been ridiculously easy. It was always easy to get fake ID if you knew where to look, and Clint always knew where to look. Harder was getting the Soldier and the Widow to look less like trained killers and more like a young, dumb couple in love. 

Well, the Widow - Natasha, Clint sternly reminded himself, they couldn’t pull this off if he couldn’t remember to call them by their new names - managed fairly well, turning dopey smiles on the-, on _James_, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself to even pretend to like the baby. 

She’d also tailed Clint all over the city, unsubtle in a blonde wig, just to remind him she was there and watching, like Clint could even begin to forget that the two foremost assassins in the world were watching to make sure he didn’t fuck anything up or fuck them over. 

Clint already had a half dozen of his own passports, S.H.I.E.L.D.-sanctioned or otherwise, so that wasn’t a problem. The bigger problem was making three assassins and a baby look like one big happy family and then smuggling them overseas undetected. 

Clint had an idea for that, actually. A stupid, ridiculous idea that no one in their right mind would ever, ever consider, which hopefully meant the Red Room wouldn’t either.

He still had to sell the Widow and the Soldier on it, but he was pretty sure it was a great idea.

“I need to call my handler,” Clint announced, dropping the new passports, drivers’ licenses, and a random assortment of junk food on the coffee table. When he looked up, there was a gun in his face. He blinked past the cool metal to the hand holding it, to the narrowed gaze of the Winter Soldier and the incongruity of the fact that he was still holding a baby along with the gun. In his other arm, but still. 

“Dude,” Clint said. “Not about you. I can’t just disappear into thin air, I need to call him and tell him I’m gonna be busy.”

The click of a safety being either engaged or disengaged behind him let Clint know the W-, that _Natasha_ had also pulled a weapon. 

“You can stay, you can listen,” Clint offered. “I mean you gotta keep the kid quiet. But I have to call him and tell him something.”

There was another click behind him that meant Natasha had put the safety back _on_, and Clint felt all the hair on his arms stand on end. Jesus Christ, these two were gonna be the death of him. Literally. 

“I’ll tell him I have a lead on you in - in Budapest, or something, but that I have to go undercover to trace it. I’ve done that before, it won’t seem like a big deal. But I can’t fuck off to nowhere and not tell him anything, not if you’re planning to defect to S.H.I.E.L.D. That’s never gonna fly.”

“Madripoor,” Natasha said. 

“What?”

“Tell him you have a lead in Madripoor,” she repeated. “Not Budapest.”

“Okay.” Clint shrugged. It didn’t make a difference to him, but he supposed letting her pick the city probably made her feel more in control of the situation. 

The gun that James - look at that, Clint was getting better at this name thing - was holding finally disappeared from the end of his nose. 

“Call now,” James ordered, tucking it away into the back of his pants. Which was a shitty place for a gun, really, if you valued your butt cheeks, but Clint didn’t mention that. 

“Right now?” Clint asked.

“Right now,” James agreed, looking at him expectantly. “Baby’s asleep, now’s as good a time as any.”

Clint rolled his neck and shoulders to work out some of the tension. “Fine,” he said. He reached for the Nokia he’d left on the table while he was out all morning, because Natasha had glared at him when he’d gone to take it with him. He dialed the familiar number from memory, even remembering the country code correctly, and waited through the series of rings and clicks that meant he was being transferred through multiple secure lines.

“Coulson.” It was the familiar voice of his handler, and something in Clint’s chest unspooled. 

He was doing something incredibly risky and stupid, albeit for the right reasons, and while he knew Phil would call him seven shades of stupid for even considering it, they’d been through a lot of shit together and Phil had always had his back.

“Can I come home now?” Clint whined. “The pizza sucks.”

“Hawkeye.” Phil sounded fondly exasperated. “Report.”

Natasha was watching him with narrowed eyes, and James had shifted even closer, rubbing his thumb over the baby’s back in slow, sweeping circles. 

“Failed to make contact with the target. New intel suggests she’s moved on to Madripoor.”

“Nothing in our intelligence report suggests Madripoor.”

“You’re talking to the wrong people then,” Clint said, aiming for confident. “My sources all agree the Widow has a new objective in Madripoor.” Clint raised an eyebrow at Natasha, who gave him a short, sharp nod. She turned to the desktop computer in the corner, booting it up.

Clint hoped that meant she was going to leave some kind of breadcrumb trail to support his assertion.

Coulson’s voice continued in his ear. “Can you corroborate your sources?”

“Absolutely,” Clint said, sounding very reassuring, if he did say so himself.

Coulson made the same disbelieving noise he’d made when Clint had said he wasn’t hurt when he’d actually needed twelve stitches and two of his fingers re-set. 

“I can!” Clint argued, before realizing he’d fallen right into Coulson’s usual trap. 

“Provide me with any corroborating sources, and I’ll approve a change of location.”

“It’s got to be undercover,” Clint said, deflecting. “I’ve got reason to think she suspects there are agents in Rome and that’s why she’s changed location.”

Clint could almost hear Phil frowning. 

“Look,” Clint bargained, pressing his point, “let me go to Madripoor for a few weeks, undercover, poke around and see what comes out. Maybe it’s nothing, but the Widow is either here and avoiding me, or gone and I’m wasting my time. Whichever one it is, I’m not going to accomplish anything else in Italy.”

“Fine,” Phil sighed. “You’re usually right. Check in when you can, call for extraction if you need it. You’ve got three weeks, Hawkeye, before I come after you myself.”

He hung up before Clint could say thanks.

Clint tossed the phone on the table, once he’d checked to make sure the connection was closed. James palmed the phone, stripping the battery out of the back and pocketing it. 

“Three weeks,” Clint told the two of them, smiling broadly. “Plenty of time.”

James picked up the passports and other papers, thumbing through them idly. “Why did you change the baby’s name?” he asked, brow furrowed.

“He needed three names and Grant Nathan sounded stupid,” Clint said. “So I figured Natasha, Nathan, Nat, Nate, I dunno. I was in a rush.”

Natasha looked faintly pleased, although James was still giving Clint a strange sort of considering look, but he dropped the subject.

**

Three weeks was not, in fact, plenty of time. 

Clint’s brilliant idea was also a hard sell, but at least he’d expected that part.

“You want to go on a _cruise_?” Natasha said, raising one eyebrow in a way that was already speaking volumes to Clint, despite the fact they’d only spent a few days in each others’ company. 

“Yeah, look,” he said, leaning forward on the dilapidated couch and bracing his elbows on his knees. They’d moved from Clint’s substandard S.H.I.E.L.D. Safehouse to a marginally cleaner and slightly larger version on the other side of the city at James’ insistence. “There’s virtually no security - you hide his arm, pose as a happy couple, I’ll be his irritating older brother, and no one will be the wiser. Would you have ever thought to look for a target there?”

Natasha and James - and Clint had just about got used to calling them that, at least in his head - glanced at each other. They had the kind of looks that held entire conversations, and Clint wondered what their history actually was. 

After a moment, Natasha turned back to him, ready to speak for both assassins as usual. James kept mostly to himself, though when he did have commentary to add it was usually bitingly acidic or startlingly funny. Or both. The baby seemed to exist only on Natasha’s periphery, with James providing all of the kid’s care, from bottles to diaper changes. They’d taken the very back bedroom and Clint hadn’t heard so much as a peep out of either of them since they’d moved house. The baby was alarmingly silent, only making the softest of noises and almost never fussing. He was older than Clint had first assumed, able to sit up on his own and look around inquisitively, with the same shade of blue-grey eyes as James. Clint figured him somewhere around five-ish months old, basing his guess on the few babies that had been around when he was in the circus and some hazy biology he’d learned at some point. 

Kid wasn’t walking or talking, anyway, and that was the main point. 

“No,” Natasha admitted, “but I’d never expect a target to put themselves somewhere they couldn’t readily leave.”

Clint shrugged. He’d never said the cruise idea didn’t have any downsides. The alternative was flying, and he’d be willing to bet that Red Room was going to be on the lookout for a guy with a metal arm carrying a baby, and a diminutive redhead. Cruise was the less obvious option, even if it did take longer.

“There’s lifeboats,” he offered, as though anyone had ever escaped from a boat on a lifeboat. 

“‘Cos that worked so well for the _Titanic_,” James rasped, but the slight curl of his lips gave away the joke, and Clint snorted. 

“I’m looking at this one,” Clint offered, tossing some pamphlets onto the table. He’d looted a half-dozen itineraries from the local travel agencies, trying to find a cruise that departed somewhere easily accessible and disembarked anywhere in the U.S. where Red Room wouldn’t think to look for them. He’d settled on a sixteen day cruise out of Barcelona, which had an end-destination of San Juan. 

Who smuggled assassins into the country through Puerto Rico?

Clint Baron, that’s who, but the Red Room didn’t know that. 

It was relatively cheap, too, considering it included meals with the rooms, along with enough entertainment to keep Clint from going out of his goddamn mind.

“We can get a couple of connecting rooms, book you guys into one and me in the other and see how it shakes out. It includes meals, sleeping space, and the fact that no one is going to look for you there. As long as we get on the boat unnoticed, we’re home free.”

“Puerto Rico?” Natasha asked, disbelieving. 

“Better than New York,” Clint countered. “That’s the first place they’re gonna look. Hope your Spanish is up to par.”

She smirked, then rattled off something very rude in perfect _Español_. 

“It was a joke,” Clint said, rolling his eyes. “There’s other options,” Clint said, and sat down a stack of other pamphlets, “I just think this is the best one. We can take the ferry from Civitavecchia to Barcelona, avoid planes altogether.”

“This is going to take a lot longer than three weeks,” James observed, and the more he spoke, the more Clint could hear the faint echo of some kind of accent.

“Yeah,” Clint sighed. “That’s a problem. The next departure date is October 16th, arrives in San Juan on November 1st. From there we’d have to fly, but I think it’ll be lower risk there than just about anywhere else. In the meantime, I figure I need to go to Madripoor and make some noise. We’re still a couple of weeks from departure, I can go make a ruckus for a few days, then come back.”

“I will come with you,” Natasha announced. “It will make your story look better.”

The fact that she could also keep an eye on him went unsaid.

**

Madripoor had not improved its looks or its reputation. 

Natasha had arrived separately from Clint and he’d revised his private estimation of her age up from sixteen to twenty four and then back down again when she’d found him first at Brass Monkey and second at Madame Joy’s, looking nearly unrecognizable each time. Brunette with high cheekbones and a cool, brown gaze at Brass Monkey, then blonde with rounder, fuller lips and bright blue eyes at Madame Joy’s. Clint had only recognized her because she’d winked at him, sidled up and ‘allowed’ him to buy her a drink, propositioned him with an amused tilt of her lips.

“You’re not my type,” Clint told her, the third night she found him in a hole-in-the-wall bar in Lotown, sipping a shitty beer. 

“Baby,” she purred, and dragged her fingers up his arm, “I’m everyone’s type.”

He snorted. 

Her hands found their way into his jeans pocket, and he felt something slide into it, a small square that was either a condom or a matchbook. He hoped the latter. 

“I really prefer redheads,” he added, when her fingers danced their way back out of his jeans and back around his arm. Fuck it, he might as well add some depth to his cover here. 

Natasha smirked up at him from beneath yet another wig, but the colored contacts were gone, revealing her bright green gaze. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she murmured, and then sauntered away.

The gift in his pocket turned out to be a matchbook with a slip of paper folded up inside, a date and time on the torn scrap, and the matchbook itself from a bar Clint was known to frequent on the other side of town. 

Perfect.

He called Phil that night. “I’ve made contact,” he said without preamble, when Coulson’s dry tones came across the scratchy connection. 

Coulson made an interested noise. “With the Widow?”

Clint shrugged, even though Phil couldn’t see him. “With a contact who could lead me to the Widow. I’ll know more when I know more. But this is going to take longer than anticipated.”

“Hmm, yes.” Coulson sighed, and Clint could hear the faint sounds of shuffling paper. “Take all the time you need. Contact me when you can, we’ll use the usual pre-arranged dead drops if we need them. Good work, Hawkeye.”

Clint felt vaguely guilty as he hung up the phone, but not guilty enough to do anything differently. He was bringing in a top-level agent from the Red Room and hiding a baby who didn’t deserve anything the terrorist organization had planned for him or even anything S.H.I.E.L.D. would want him for. It was hard to feel too bad about it. 

He was having some trouble squaring his plan to let the Winter Soldier off the hook, but some of the little comments he and Natasha had made about their time with Red Room soothed his conscience some. It was obvious they’d been hard done by, and it seemed equally obvious to Clint - who knew something about manipulation by people who’d both pretended to care for you and held your fate in their hands - that they hadn’t had much choice in the matter.

What _did_ it take to turn a teenaged girl into a trained operative? For that matter, what did it take to turn an empathetic man into a mindless killer - Clint had watched James with the baby, saw the instinctual caring and empathy, the way he went out of his way to comfort and protect. 

And that arm.

No one in the world had developed prosthetic arms that were wired directly into the brain the way James’ was. 

The scarring around the edges of it, which Clint had caught glimpses of under the edges of a tank top once or twice, spoke to something that had been immensely painful.

And none of it explained how James could have been killing high-profile targets thirty years ago when he looked barely into his late twenties. 

Clint supposed James could have also been a trained killer from birth - that was obviously what they’d intended for the baby - but he doubted a five month old could fire a sniper rifle, regardless of what Hydra did to it. 

All of it sent his instincts screaming, and Clint had long ago learned not to ignore those instincts. They’d saved his life more than once.

He spent another few days tooling around Madripoor, being followed by Natasha, and generally making a bit of a ruckus, before turning up at the appointed date and time on his little matchbook. It was at Harbor Bar, dim and dingy and easy to miss in the blackness of a burned-out street lamp. Inside wasn’t any better, and Clint folded himself into a booth in the far corner where he could see the bar counter and the exit with a lukewarm beer and a healthy sense of paranoia.

He couldn’t imagine why Natasha had wanted to meet here, other than an obvious set up, and the tension in his shoulders was giving him a steadily-building headache. 

After some indeterminate amount of time, during which Clint nursed his beer to the bottom dregs and sweated under his t-shirt, she slid into the booth across from him during a brief moment of inattention. 

The bartender had dropped a rack of glasses, and Clint’s eye had gone immediately to the source of the noise. In the time it took him to take stock of the situation and resume his watchful gaze, Natasha was sitting across from him with two unopened beers in her hands, her signature red hair on full display, in a tank top and ripped jeans, with beads in her hair.

“Jesus fuck,” Clint grumbled, reaching out to take one of the beers and popping the cap with a keyring he kept in his pocket. He popped hers while he was at it. 

Natasha smirked at him around the lip of the bottle as she took a long drink.

The beers were significantly colder than the one the bartender had given Clint on arrival, and it was amazing how much better it tasted. 

Natasha slid a sealed envelope across the table to him. “For your friends,” she said. “Something to keep their attention.”

Clint wrapped his fingers around the envelope carefully. “What is it?”

She hummed. “Persons of interest,” she prevaricated.

A list of targets, then. She was right. That would keep S.H.I.E.L.D. interested, at least for the time being. Enough time for them to get out of Europe and on to U.S. soil, at least. 

“What about you?” 

“I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point,” she said, tossing her hair, making sure the light caught on it, shiny as a new penny. “I think you have a friend by the bar,” she added, not glancing away from his face. 

Clint hadn’t noticed anyone familiar at the bar when he’d come in, and it wouldn’t do him any good to look around now. He shrugged. 

Natasha drank the rest of her beer, never taking her eyes off of him, and then left the empty bottle sitting on the table. She slid out of the booth as easily as she’d slid into it, without a whisper of sound, and then sauntered out of the bar, all eyes on her.

She’d wanted to be seen, then.

Clint gripped the envelope tighter, debating his options. 

In the end, he settled for reclining back into the booth with the remains of his beer and waiting it out. When the drink was empty, he wagged the bottle at the bartender, who brought him another one with an annoyed sigh, and only once it was sitting in front of him, did Clint open the envelope. 

Inside was a list of people with an assigned ranking, along with a brief description of their known aliases and whereabouts, skills, and affiliations. The Winter Soldier was featured prominently at the top, listing him as defected with no known aliases and a list of skills that was as impressive as it was deadly. 

Clint himself was on the list as Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Level 7, along with notes for his marksmanship, hand to hand, and a handful of aliases he’d long since abandoned. 

It made Clint smile. 

He was on the Black Widow’s hit list. Nice. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Clint saw someone approaching his table with too much determination and not nearly enough casual interest and he mentally rolled his eyes. This must be the ‘friend’ Natasha was referring to. He folded the papers up carefully and nonchalantly stuffed them back in the envelope before lifting up enough to shove it in his back pocket.

“Can I join you?” the guy asked, and Clint looked up to take stock of his visitor. 

He was average height, average build, average looks, about as bland as was possible to be, and everything about him said ‘baby agent’. 

“Sure,” Clint said with a sigh, gesturing at the seat across from him. “Not like this night can get any worse.”

Then the guy pulled out his _fucking S.H.I.E.L.D. badge_ and proved Clint wrong.

He caught a glimpse of the name, the colored band that indicated this guy was too low on the totem pole to be anything but cannon fodder, and the code for his home office before he managed to wave it away frantically. 

“Put that away,” Clint hissed. “Are you trying to get us both killed? Christ on a fuckin’ cracker.”

The guy - Steve Johnson, and Clint hoped to fuck that was an alias - tucked the badge back into the front pocket of his jacket like he was in a James Bond movie. 

“Agent Barton-”

“Stop talking.” Clint cut him off. “You’re going to blow my cover, what’s left of your cover, and this entire operation, and you’re going to do it in a record amount of time. Did Coulson send you?”

“No, but the WSC-”

Clint groaned and scrubbed a hand across his face. 

The World Security Council was nothing if not an epic pain in the ass, so of course they’d undermined Coulson’s authority to send one of their pet agents to Madripoor after Clint. It was a habit of theirs, to try and micromanage high-stakes operations when Coulson and Fury politely told them to get fucked.

Clint maneuvered the envelope out of his pocket and thrust it under the table, knocking it against Johnson’s knee. “Take it, fuck knows I don’t want it, and that’ll give you something to do with your time,” he hissed, pissed as all hell. 

Johnson looked utterly bewildered, and Clint almost felt bad for how badly he was treating the kid, but he needed to wise up and he needed to do it before he got himself - or Clint - dead. Madripoor wasn’t the place to flash official badges or try to shake down senior agents. 

When Johnson took the envelope from between Clint’s fingers, Clint stood up, drained his beer, and stalked out of the bar.

Let S.H.I.E.L.D. and the WSC chew on that. 

He stayed one more night in Madripoor, saw neither hide nor hair of Natasha, and grew increasingly frustrated. 

Clint made a last short, clipped phone call to Phil, describing the incident, and managed to at least grin at the annoyed tone Coulson adopted. He threw the burner phone in a trash can on his way to the airport as he boarded the first of many flights, taking a complicated and messy route back to Rome. 

He hoped James hadn’t changed locations in his absence, because Clint had only just beaten his borrowed safehouse pillow into submission before the trip, and God knew he was going to need a nap.


	3. Chapter 3

Getting on the cruise ship was ridiculously easy. They slid fake passports and real tickets across the counter and just… boarded the boat. It was so easy that both James and Natasha were twitchy about it, but Clint was mostly just relieved. He’d been worried that someone was going to flag their papers, ask the wrong questions - something - but the bored-looking ticket agent had just checked them in and told them what numbers their staterooms were. 

The staterooms were not as roomy as Clint had imagined. The brochures all said they slept four apiece, and Clint had gotten two connected rooms for them to split between the three of them. He figured James and Natasha would take one and he’d take the other and that would be that.

Which is pretty much how they split up the first night. 

The ship departed from Barcelona just before dinner without incident, and Clint, Natasha, and James all managed to grab food from one of the never-ending buffet dinners on the ship before they all bunked down in unspoken agreement. Clint, for one, felt safer on the boat than he ever had in the safe house in Rome, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep that was interrupted far, far too early in the morning. 

“I’m sleeping here,” Natasha announced, throwing her duffle onto the bed beside Clint, who jolted awake with a nasty sense of surprise.

“What?” he grumbled, scrubbing a hand over his face. He was sure he’d locked the connecting door, but what did that matter to an international assassin? 

Then again, who was he kidding? Clint could have picked that lock in his sleep when he was eight.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked, instead, sitting up enough that he felt at less of a disadvantage.

“I’m sleeping here now,” Natasha repeated, and began shrugging out of her oversized sweatshirt, stripping down to a tanktop and shorts.

Clint scrambled out of bed. “Alright, hang on, what’s goin’ on?”

“Can’t sleep,” Natasha grumbled, and now she was climbing into the side of the bed Clint hadn’t rumpled in his sleep, “because of the fucking baby.” She was already settling comfortably in the bed - in _Clint’s_ bed and Clint- 

“Nope,” Clint said, climbing out from under the sheets in his boxers. “Nope, I’m out, _you’re_ a baby, we’re not sharing a bed.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Whatever. More bed for me.”

Clint debated trying to wrestle one of the trundle beds out on the other side of the room, versus the floor, versus-

“Bed’s free next door,” Natasha told him, already half-mumbling her words. 

A baby wouldn’t keep him awake, Clint figured. Clint slept like the fuckin’ dead when he wasn’t on a mission, most night noises kept at bay by the mild hearing loss he’d suffered with since he was a child. _Probably_ the baby wouldn’t bother him.

He was really more worried about the other assassin killing him.

But at this point it was either assassin A or assassin B, and assassin B apparently had an empty bed and was also likely of legal age.

Clint went through the connecting door. 

James was bouncing the baby in the dim light cast by the barely-open bathroom door. The kid wasn’t really making any noise, but Clint could see that he was restless, scrubbing his face against James’ shoulder and squirming in his arms. 

“Apparently Natasha and I are swapping rooms,” Clint whispered, when James looked up at him. 

James shrugged and turned away, attention back to shushing the baby. 

Clint still wasn’t over the strangeness of watching a huge, muscular man with a metal arm bounce a baby the way he could remember seeing mothers tend to their children in the circus crowds. It was some kind of cognitive dissonance that Clint couldn’t get past, but James was never anything but patient and gentle. 

The baby looked at him over James’ shoulder with wide, sleepy eyes. 

The king-sized bed in the room was, true to Natasha’s word, empty on the far side of the room, and Clint headed for the side that was still neat as a pin, rather than barely rumpled from her slight form. He climbed between cool sheets and shifted until he was comfortable, pulling two of the pillows down from the headboard and punching them into place. 

He drifted to sleep, watching James rock the baby in the stillness of the night, as gently as the ocean rocked the boat.

**

When Clint woke up the next morning, the other side of the bed was still in its same untouched state. The wrinkles in the blankets were virtually identical to the ones that had been there when Clint climbed into the bed, and Clint had subconsciously kept himself strictly to his side of the mattress.

There was not, he realized, sitting up and stretching, a trundle bed anywhere in sight. In fact, the pull-away crib that the cruise line had provided for the baby took up most of the space where the trundle beds would normally be. The baby was asleep in said crib, snoozing peacefully, and if he had woken again in the night, Clint hadn’t been aware of it.

James was asleep on the floor.

Clint blinked at him.

James was asleep on the floor, what the _fuck_?

Clint picked up a pillow to throw at him and then, miraculously, thought better of it. Probably waking up a world-famous assassin with a pillow to the face wasn’t his best idea.

Then again, it probably wasn’t his worst. 

“James,” he hissed.

There was a moment and then James stirred, lifting his head from the pillow he’d at least bothered to pull out of the linen closet along with a blanket, to glare at Clint. “What?” he yell-whispered back.

“What the fuck are you doing on the floor?”

“I _was_ sleeping,” James said, acerbically, managing to convey just how much _what the fuck_ he was feeling even through the whisper.

“I meant why are you sleeping on the _floor_.”

James gestured at him, semi-sarcastically. “You’re in the bed,” he pointed out.

“It’s a king-sized bed!”

James rolled his eyes, flopping back down on his pillow. The baby didn’t move, thank fuck. Clint was in no way caffeinated enough to deal with both an assassin and a baby this early in the morning. Clint needed coffee. Coffee was life. 

“Well, look,” he whispered, crawling from between the sheets, “I’m getting up to piss and get some coffee, so the bed is unoccupied. But for fuck’s sake, James, we could share the bed, it’s big enough. Don’t sleep on the damn floor.”

James’ brow wrinkled in confusion. “You moved because you didn’t want to share with Natalia.”

“Because she’s a _baby_,” Clint hissed. “Not because I care about sharing a bed. I was in the circus, I’ve shared way worse than a king-sized bed with people I liked way less.”

“She’s not a baby. That’s a baby.” James pointed at the crib.

Clint threw the pillow at him.

James caught it in mid-air and added it to the one he already had on the floor.

“Get in the fucking bed,” Clint ordered. “We can build a pillow wall if it makes you feel better, but you’re not sleeping on the damn floor, and I’m not sharing with Natasha. I don’t think she’s actually an adult. It’s weird.”

“She’s an adult.”

“How old is she then?”

James brow furrowed in thought. He seemed to be thinking about it awfully hard. “Eighteen? Almost eighteen?” He nodded, almost to himself. “She was born in ‘80, I remember.”

“You remember,” Clint repeated flatly.

“There was a whole-” James cut himself off abruptly. “It was 1980. In the fall.”

Clint filed the information away, curiosity eating at him. James was glaring though, as if daring Clint to ask anything else.

“Take the bed,” Clint said again. He shuffled to the connecting door and found it locked. With a sigh, he turned back to James. “Can I borrow some pants? I left my lock picks in the other room.”

James rolled his eyes and rolled to sitting from his position on the floor. He dragged his duffle bag closer and threw a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt at Clint. 

Now decently dressed at least, Clint went in search of coffee.

**

The ship was absolutely full to bursting with old people. 

Clint didn’t have anything against old people, exactly, but he stood out like a sore thumb as a young guy, alone in the buffet line, piling his plate with eggs and bacon and drinking his third cup of coffee. And the old ladies kept ogling him.

He was pretty sure someone pinched his ass.

It didn’t help that the sweats were too short in the leg and the shirt too wide in the shoulders. He just stood out that much more in his ill-fitting clothes when the people around him were wearing golf shorts and visors and those stretchy slacks that old women favored. 

He made a mental note to move his duffle from what was now Natasha’s room to the stateroom he and James were apparently sharing. 

Clint hoped James had gone to sleep after he left.

His hopes were dashed when he saw his familiar lank hair and strut across the room, scanning the crowd. The baby was perched in the crook of his arm, which was covered by the sleeve of a baggy hooded sweatshirt. Clint lifted his hand in greeting, and James made his way through the crowd, people subconsciously getting out of his way. Clint pushed his plate away from him, and downed the last dregs of his coffee.

“Give him here,” Clint said, holding his arms out.

James looked affronted, and Clint sighed. “Gimme the kid, James, so you can go get some breakfast.”

James looked from Clint, to the lines, and back to Clint. He heaved a sigh before gingerly passing the baby over. “Don’t drop him,” he growled.

It was Clint’s turn to be offended. 

James stalked off before he came up with a good retort though, and Clint turned to the kid with a sigh. 

“What’s up kid?” he asked, perching him on the edge of the table so they could face each other. Nathan stared at him with solemn blue-grey eyes before stuffing his fist in his mouth. Clint wondered if the kid was old enough for table food. He eyed the strawberries on his plate.

Surely one wouldn’t hurt?

When James came back, Nathan was covered in red juice and gnawing happily on the fruit. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” James asked, dropping into the chair next to Clint with two plates and a mug balanced in his arms. 

Clint shrugged. “He looked hungry.”

“Is he supposed to be eating solids?” James asked, as though Clint had any fucking clue what he was doing. 

“He’s eating them.” Clint said, in lieu of an answer. “How old is he anyway?”

“Six months,” James said, around a mouthful of eggs. “Birthday’s in April.”

That told Clint absolutely nothing. Did six month old babies eat people food? Who knew?

Probably one of the grandmothers around them, actually, now that Clint thought of it. 

Like she was summoned by Clint’s errant thoughts, a woman who was seventy if she was a day inserted herself at their table. 

“He’s so cute!” she said, beaming, wrinkles crinkling around her mouth and eyes. “How old is he?”

“Six months,” Clint said automatically, like he’d been trained to respond to grandmotherly-types. 

“Such a sweet age,” she cooed, buttering her toast. “Is he sleeping through the night yet?”

Clint turned to James quizzically. James manfully swallowed the frankly ridiculous amount of food in his mouth. “No,” he said. “Keeps wakin’ up hungry.”

Stranger grandma hummed thoughtfully. “Put a little cereal in his bottle,” she advised, all old-lady wisdom. “That’ll sort him out.”

Another woman plopped down beside her. “You’re not supposed to do that anymore,” she said. “They stopped doing that years ago Lydia.” She turned to Clint and James. “If he’s eating solids just feed him a good solid meal before bedtime. He’ll sleep through the night when he’s ready.” She nodded as though she’d just imparted the wisdom of the world on them. The other woman - Lydia - rolled her eyes. 

“Are you his father?” Lydia politely asked Clint.

“Uh,” he said, caught flat-footed.

“We’re not sure,” Natasha said, from behind them, making both Clint and James whip around to stare at her. She looked fresh from the shower, breezing in with her red curls tumbling over her shoulders, in a pair of shorts and a tank top. She looked somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty today, makeup carefully applied. She had a cup of what smelled like tea and a bowl of oatmeal. Clint wrinkled his nose. 

Then her words caught up with him and he blanched.

“Could be either of them,” she continued, blithely, settling in beside Clint. She took a delicate sip of her tea. “The dates kind of overlap.”

James turned a horrified stare on her.

The rest of breakfast was spent in frigid silence, except for the occasional noise from Nathan, as Natasha calmly ate her oatmeal and sipped her tea, and James ducked his head and shoveled food into his mouth like it was his sole mission in life.

When he was done he unceremoniously took Nathan from Clint and stalked away, giving Natasha a dirty look. 

She sighed in contentment.

Clint groaned.

Lydia and her friend left without a word, as soon as their plates were empty.

“Very funny,” Clint told Natasha.

“I thought so,” she agreed, setting her cup aside. 

It was going to be a very long trip. 

**

“You’re saying we have to eat dinner as a group,” James said, his face schooled into an expressionless mask. 

“Uhh… yes,” Clint ventured, cringing.

It wasn’t his fault.

Okay, it was totally his fault. He’d never been on a cruise before, he didn’t _know_ that evening meals were all group events, served in assigned dining halls at assigned tables. Clint, Natasha, James and Nathan were grouped with two other couples at a table for the duration of the cruise, except for when the ship made port and dinner was optional. There was even a formal night, which _none_ of them had packed for. 

“And there are no other dinner options?” Natasha called through the open adjoining door.

“We don’t have to eat,” James countered, looking sullen on the small couch in his and Clint’s stateroom. 

“I mean, that’s definitely an option,” Clint agreed, already thinking about how he wasn’t going to skip any meals he didn’t have to. He’d missed enough meals as a kid, thank you very much. 

“It’s really not,” Natasha said, breezing into the room. She’d changed into jeans and a red and white print tank. “We’re going to attract attention if we skip all of the meals.”

“We’re going to attract attention if you keep telling everyone you don’t know who your baby’s daddy is,” Clint said, turning a skeptical eyebrow on her.

She shrugged. “No, that just makes us eccentric. Not showing up for meals makes us the strange recluses who are fucking through dinner every night.”

Clint hated that she was right.

James apparently hated it too, judging by the scowl on his face.

They went to dinner. 

At least it wasn’t formal night. Clint was going to have to do something about that. There were several shops on board, he was certain he’d be able to find _something_ to wear. And Natasha kept producing clothes from thin air, as far as he could tell. Not that he’d seen what she packed, but she’d had one bag, the same as the rest of them, and yet she kept showing up in clothes he’d never seen her in, despite their time in the safehouse in Rome. 

When they got to the dining room and found their assigned table, there was at least a high chair waiting for them, and fairly straightforward menus. Clint settled with the baby between him and James, Natasha on James’ left. She was clearly as uninterested as possible in Nathan, and Clint was starting to feel a strange sense of camaraderie with James. It had to be exhausting to be the sole caregiver all the time right? Clint could help entertain the kid while James got something to eat, at least. 

Their table mates could not possibly be more different. 

Couple number one was a young-ish couple. Well young by comparison to the rest of the passengers, looking to be in their mid forties, obviously here on some kind of kid-free trip and giddy about it. The wife was brunette, and Clint picked out the signs of expensive plastic surgery around her eyes and, well, in her general chest region. The husband was portly, with a receding hairline and a too-white smile. 

Couple number two was Lydia and her husband.

Clint sighed audibly. 

James gave Natasha a dirty look.

Natasha ordered a glass of wine. 

Clint decided fuck it, and ordered vodka soda. James sighed at both of them, but he ordered a double whisky on the rocks, and drained it without pause.

Lydia stared judgmentally. 

“So,” Plastic Surgery Wife said, “what do you all do?”

“We’re ordained ministers in the Brigade of Light Church,” Natasha casually answered, sipping at her wine.

James looked murderous.

It did not improve much after that. Natasha continued punking the people at their table, drinking wine and cutting into a bloody steak with aplomb, and Clint and James just kept drinking. It seemed the only sane way to handle the situation. They had two full weeks of meals with these people, and Natasha couldn’t seem to resist heckling them. 

Luckily, before the dessert course arrived, Nate got tired and what passed for fussy from him - rubbing at his eyes and visibly drooping. James abandoned his dinner with a kind of thankful resignation that made Clint envious, scooping Nate up and heading back to the room. Clint stared after him longingly. 

“You can go with him if you like,” Natasha said brightly. “I’m a little tired tonight anyway, it might be best if I slept alone.”

Clint resisted the urge to pound his forehead into the table. Barely. 

When the dessert courses arrived - chocolate cake for Natasha and James, who hadn’t reappeared, not that Clint expected him to, and cheesecake for Clint - he resentfully ate both his and James’. Then he pushed his chair back, smiled thinly at the other people at the table, glared at Natasha, and went back to his room.

It was going to be such a long cruise. 

James was already in the bed when Clint got there, propped up on the pillows and reading some kind of science fiction novel. 

“What is her problem?” Clint demanded, as soon as the door shut behind him. James glanced up over the edge of the book and then pointedly cut his eyes at the crib, where Nathan was sleeping peacefully.

Clint sighed and lowered his voice. “What the _hell_ is her problem?” he whispered viciously.

James put the book down. “Nothing,” he whispered back. “She’s bored and she thinks it’s funny to upset stuffy people. And you. If you stop letting it bother you, she’ll stop doing it.” He stopped to consider his own words. “Well, that’s not true, but it will stop bothering you, so that’s an improvement.”

“I guess,” Clint said reluctantly. He flopped down on the side of the bed James wasn’t lying on. “Does this mean we’re gonna share the bed?”

He got a shrug in response and took that for agreement.

“Did you know this ship has five pools?”

James gave him another look. “I don’t really think I’m going to be getting in a pool.”

“Is the arm not waterproof?” Clint asked, dubiously. The guy was an assassin, surely they’d have thought to make it impervious to liqu- oh. “Oh. Nevermind.”

James returned to his book with a roll of his eyes. 

Clint went to shower off his embarrassment. 

**

The second night went better than the first, in that Clint was not awoken by invading assassins. He woke, briefly, when James rolled out of the bed to tend to Nate, and fell immediately back to sleep. The next morning he stumbled out of bed and went in search of coffee, but decided not to brave the crowds, instead taking two cups to go back to the stateroom for him and James. Natasha could caffeinate herself, he figured, after the fiasco that was yesterday. He made a pit stop at the Sand ‘n Surf shop on the floor above the dining room.

He found James sitting at the little dinette set with Nate, spooning applesauce into the baby’s mouth with a look of grim determination.

Clint was pretty sure there was more applesauce _on_ the kid than in him, but he handed the coffee over wordlessly, juggling the cup around the bag from the shop.

James took it with a surprised “thanks” and kept trying to spoon food into Nate’s mouth.

Nate kept spitting it back out. 

Clint sipped the coffee. “I’m not sure he likes applesauce,” he offered, after a few minutes.

James gave him a dirty look and Clint held his hands up - one still clutching a cup of coffee - in the universal gesture of surrender. “Just sayin’.”

With a put-upon sigh, James tossed the rest of the applesauce and chugged his coffee. “What’s on the agenda for the day?” he asked, instead, and began scrubbing Nathan off with baby wipes. 

Clint help up the plastic shopping bag he’d brought back with him. “I was thinking pool day.” He dug around in the bag until he found the tiny baby swim shorts he’d bought for Nathan. “Babies like water, right? There’s a kiddie pool thing on the third deck, and it’s all inside so no risk of sunburn.”

James gave him a narrow-eyed look. 

“What?” Clint said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun?” Clint ventured, brow furrowing. 

“I can’t take him in the water,” James pointed out, flexing the metal arm.

Clint shrugged. “I was gonna take him.”

James just blinked at him. 

“What?” Clint said again. “I won’t let him drown or anything.”

“Fine,” James said shortly, passing the baby off to Clint with almost no warning. Clint managed to keep a grip on him, dropping the shopping bag with his left hand to hoist the kid up onto his hip. James dug around in his own duffle bag until he produced a lightweight, long-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of cut-off shorts. 

“Oh!” Clint said. “I got you shorts too.”

James gave him another look. 

“I mean, I know you’re not gonna get in the water but you could at least have the shorts.” Clint held the bag out meaningfully. James pulled the remainder of the items out of the bag with raised eyebrows. One pair was a kind of sea green color with multicolored stripes. The other pair was purple with blue and green surfboards.

“The purple ones’re mine,” Clint said defensively. “It was a limited selection!”

James ducked into the bathroom without a word, but Clint could feel his judgment hanging heavy in the air. He came out less than a minute later, the long-sleeved t-shirt covering his arm and the swim trunks underneath. Clint was actually kinda proud of himself - the shorts fit pretty well, since Clint had only had his own size and the way James’ sweatpants had fit him to go off of. Clint passed the baby back to James and then went into the bathroom to put his own shorts on. He didn’t bother with a shirt, and James gave him a strange look when he came out.

“What? I like purple!”

Shaking his head, James hooked a pair of sunglasses into the collar of his shirt and pulled a black surfing glove onto his left hand. 

Clint pursed his lips. They were going to have to come up with a story for that or something. 

“If anyone asks, I’ll tell them I burned it in a fire,” James said, answering Clint’s unspoken question. “You have to keep burn scars covered.”

Giving a shrug, Clint nodded. That would probably work, and people also probably wouldn’t ask for much more than that. “Sounds good,” he agreed, heading for the door. He paused at the knob. “Should we tell Nat?”

James huffed a laugh. “Natalia will find us if she wants us,” he assured Clint. 

The pool was crowded.

The pool was _stupid_ crowded and Clint was regretting his decision almost as soon as they got to the pool deck. The whole room was temperature controlled, which was good because fall - even in the Balearic Sea - wasn’t the warmest of weather for swimming. But the pool deck was hot and humid like the tropics, with a big glass ceiling to allow sunlight into the room. There were approximately seven million children shrieking in the room, their bored parents in loungers reading books and sipping cocktails despite the fact that it was barely ten a.m.

“Jesus fuck,” Clint said, looking around. James grunted his agreement. 

Clint gave a shrug and headed for the nearest shallow pool, then diverted sharply when he saw a kid stand up, pull his pants down, and pee in the water.

Okay, they were getting in a regular pool. People were probably peeing in that too but it was pure speculation, and Clint could handle speculation better than he could handle watching a kid literally use the pool as a urinal. He headed to the larger pool that consisted mostly of adults and a handful of older kids playing Marco Polo. He could do this. 

He dived into the deep end, the shock of cold water waking him up even better than the coffee had, and then swam across the length underwater until he got to the shallow end. He stood up, shaking the water out of his eyes, and then looking around for James. 

James was watching him dubiously as he changed Nate into the tiny swim shorts and swim diaper Clint had bought in the shop downstairs. Clint held his arms out encouragingly. “C’mon,” he called, “give him here.”

The water wasn’t that cold, right?

Nathan was handed down to him with utmost care, James giving him a murder glare that Clint was just about immune to at this point. Clint cuddled the baby close to his body, holding him against his chest and slowly lowering him into the water. Nate stared up at him as his feet went into the water, all the way to his knees, and then he suddenly switched his attention to the water. Clint settled him in his elbow, holding him so that he was sitting mostly on Clint’s arm against his shoulder, with his legs and feet in clear kicking range.

He didn’t cry and Clint decided to take that as a win. 

Clint moved around in the water, letting Nathan look his fill, until finally he reached out with a fat fist and tried to grab it. 

He tried several times, which made Clint grin, and then he slapped the water, hard. 

It bounced back and hit the baby straight in the face.

Nathan blinked in surprise.

Clint braced himself for tears - not that he’d ever seen the kid cry anyway, but hey, there was a first time for everything.

Instead he slapped the water again, splashing it everywhere.

There was the tiniest, most adorable giggle Clint had ever heard.

Clint grinned up at James, who was crouched at the edge of the pool like a gargoyle, waiting to jump in at the slightest provocation. 

Nate slapped the water again. 

It took about thirty seconds for Nate to start slapping the water with abandon, shrieking and giggling and louder than Clint had _ever _heard him in the weeks he’d known the former Red Room assassins. Blinking away the water in his face, Clint lowered the baby further down, so that he could get to the water without leaning over Clint’s chest, and Nate shrieked even louder with laughter, slapping at the water with both hands and kicking his feet. 

The triumphant look he threw James slid off his disgruntled expression, but James did get up from his crouch and stomp his way over to the nearest lounger, slumping down in annoyance, but still close enough to jump in the pool without much delay.

Of course, Nate chose that moment to put his face in the water, and Clint quickly jerked him back up, where he sputtered and scrubbed water out his face. Nate turned a chubby, nearly toothless grin on Clint, just two bottom teeth poking out above the gum line, before leaning down to grab at the water some more. 

“See?” Clint called over to where James was, frankly, pouting. “He loves it!”

James crossed his arms over his chest, put his sunglasses on, and leaned back on the lounger, pointedly ignoring Clint. 

“Well fuck you too,” Clint muttered, but without any heat.

James lifted his head and a brow - apparently he could hear that.

Clint added freakishly good hearing to his list of things James could do, and shrugged it off. Whatever, James wouldn’t try to drown him with a baby in his hands. 

He kept Nate in the water until the baby was slumped against his shoulder, drowsily gnawing on his own fist, before Clint finally climbed out of the water and brought the soaking wet bundle to James, promptly depositing him on James’ chest, which was immediately soaked with relatively freezing water.

“He needs a nap,” Clint announced. 

“You need a nap,” Natasha told him, and Clint jumped. His spacial awareness was apparently for shit, because he hadn’t noticed her come in, nor that she’d commandeered the lounger closest to James, stretched out in a high-cut, dark green bikini. 

James glared up at him from behind his sunglasses, and Clint wondered if he’d been napping himself. 

“I can take him back to the room,” Clint offered, because yeah, a nap sounded good actually. 

“I got him,” James growled, wrapping Nate up in a towel and already climbing to his feet.

“Suit yourself,” Clint shrugged, flopping down on the lounger he’d vacated. He could nap here just as easily as in the stateroom, he figured. ` 

“Getting cozy with the kid,” Natasha observed, from behind her magazine. It was a copy of US Weekly, Jennifer Aniston plastered all over the cover. There was a plastic cup with a searingly bright frozen concoction and swirly straw on the table beside Natasha. 

“Is that alcoholic?” Clint asked her, suspicious. 

She shrugged. “We got the unlimited drink package.” 

As though that were any kind of explanation.

“Should you be drinking that?”

She glared at him over her own sunglasses. “A strawberry daiquiri is the _least_ of my many sins,” she said, her mouth a hard, thin line.

And, fair.

“What’s the unlimited drink package?” Clint asked. He knew they’d got that as part of their meal plan, but he hadn’t really investigated what it meant.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Natasha said, reaching for the glass. “Unlimited beverages of any kind, including the alcoholic drinks.”

“Oh fuck yes,” Clint breathed. “Where’s the bar?”

She pointed across the pool, to where palm trees shaded a tiny bar that was doing fairly brisk business. “Eduardo skimps on the rum, get Sandy to make your drink.” Natasha gave Clint a once-over. “Maybe flex a little for her, she’ll probably like that.”

“I hate you,” Clint told her. 

She smirked.

“Save my seat,” he added, climbing up off the lounger and heading for the bar. 

Unlimited drinks would make this trip so much more bearable.

**

To a certain extent, it worked. And as Clint got accustomed to Natasha’s unique sense of humor, she either toned it down or he stopped noticing.

Their tablemates did not stop noticing. Lydia was still not speaking to any of them, which left her husband, Patrick, quietly bewildered. The more unbelievably outrageous Natasha got, the more stony silence they were treated to at dinner.

None of it mattered so long as they made it to San Juan without incident. The first few days were slightly more bearable because the ship made port in several cities, including Palma, Seville, and Santa Cruz, but once they hit the open Atlantic, there was nothing to do but find things on the ship to entertain themselves with, and eat. So much eating, which normally Clint would have been quite happy about, except that Natasha had needled their fellow passengers past the point of no return and now-

Formal night was upon them. 

Actually there were two formal nights, but Natasha had skipped the first one claiming a headache, which made Clint roll his eyes. 

“A headache? Really? You’re going to make us go to dinner and tell them you have a _headache_.” 

She smirked at him from where she was propped on a mound of pillows, with a glass of wine, a book, and snacks she’d pilfered from god-only-knew where. 

Both husbands at their table had given first Clint and then James sympathetic looks, much to Clint’s general disgruntlement. 

This time, though, Clint was prepared to argue with Natasha about going when she swept into his and James’s stateroom in a cocktail dress that bordered on indecent. It had a low neck, a lower back, and an asymmetrical hemline that ended well above the knee. 

Clint and James were in the same suits they’d worn the first night - purchased in the ship’s formal wear store and so ridiculously expensive that Clint absolutely refused to buy another - but, after some argument, they’d swapped ties. Clint was wearing James’ red tie, and James was wearing Clint’s blue-but-almost-purple tie, and Nathan-

Nate had a tuxedo bib. 

Clint found it hilariously funny.

James did not. 

Natasha’s skin tight black dress was-

Well it was something. If Clint wasn’t well aware of the fact that she was a _literal teenager_ he’d be having a moment. As it was he just closed his eyes and prayed for lightning to strike. 

James snorted a laugh, though whether it was at Natasha’s absolute drive to punk their tablemates, or Clint’s exasperation, Clint didn’t know. 

Either way, the dress drew the eye of nearly every passenger to varying degrees of admiration, and the riveted attention of the other men at their table. 

“Are we celebrating anything on this trip?” the waiter asked smoothly, pouring the champagne Natasha had ordered, seemingly on a whim. 

“Actually,” Clint said, before Natasha could ruin literally everything, “we are.”

The waiter turned to him with raised eyebrows. “It’s her birthday,” Clint said, jerking his head towards Natasha, who froze with her glass halfway to her mouth. “Well, it was her birthday yesterday, but today seems like a better day to celebrate.”

It was October 29th, and October 28th seemed like as good a day as any to claim for Nat’s birthday. James said she’d been born in the fall. Anyway, they were only a couple of days from the Caribbean and making port, so they might as well have at least a little bit of fun with the dining staff. 

Natasha blinked in growing horror as the waiter lit up like a fireworks display and James snorted a laugh into his glass. 

“Excellent!” 

Clint glanced at the guy’s name tag - _Paul_.

Paul looked like he was in heaven. “We do a wonderful birthday rendition, we’ll be sure to get to you when we bring dessert!” He hurried away, snagging another waiter as he went. 

Clint grinned at Natasha, who shot him a murderous glare. He raised his eyebrows, as though inviting her to comment. She huffed and crossed her arms, but didn’t contradict him. 

James seemed to find the whole thing amusing, his leg bumping Clint’s under the table. 

The days on the cruise ship had, quite honestly, been good for all of them. Clint wasn’t sure what he was going to do about S.H.I.E.L.D. when they got back to the States - he was more worried about getting them to his farm to be honest - and he wasn’t sure what James was going to do in the long run, but they’d formed a kind of camaraderie during their time sequestered together in two too-small cabins.

Like Stockholm Syndrome, but with people you actually liked.

Wait, maybe that’s what Stockholm Syndrome was.

Whatever it was, James seemed to have grown a personality while they’d been on the ship, snarky and acerbic and more likely to put up with both Clint and Natasha’s shenanigans than Clint would have thought possible. He’d also grown some kind of accent that sounded more Brooklyn than Russian, to Clint’s increasing bafflement. Natasha, on the other hand, seemed to delight in low-level mischief that wasn’t likely to get them in trouble but _did_ raise quite a few eyebrows everywhere she went. She lost spectacularly at Craps, won spectacularly at Blackjack, and drank enough liquor to intoxicate a man three times her size without losing her composure. James never seemed to get drunk at _all_, which was infuriating. At one point Natasha had handed off a bottle of vodka and told him to have a good time, since he hadn’t been able to get drunk in years, and James had polished it off to no ill effect.

Clint stopped trying to keep up with them after day two of discovering they had an unlimited open bar.

He was honestly going to be sorry to have to hand Nat off to Coulson, although he would have been more sorry to have had to shoot her, if he was being honest. At least Phil would probably try to bring her into the fold. Clint, after all, had his own shady past that had been conveniently covered up or overlooked. 

When the waiter returned with tonight’s dessert du jour - apple crumble - he also had a slice of vanilla birthday cake with a single candle stuck in it, and seven or eight of his closest cruise buddies. They sang Happy Birthday in Spanish, because it was a Spanish cruise, after all, and Natasha, for all that she put up a front of general disgust, seemed almost happy under all the attention; she blew the candle out with a smile on her face as Paul snapped a polaroid.


	4. Chapter 4

The farmhouse was not in as bad of shape as Clint had feared. 

It was musty and run down, and the furniture was covered in dusty sheets, but the roof was intact, and getting the water and electricity turned back on was as easy as making a couple of phone calls. Clint had done this as soon as the ship made port in San Juan so that it’d be ready when they arrived. 

Cleaning it up was… annoying. And hot and dusty. November in Iowa was neither of those things - it was cold and damp and threatening snow. Inside the house, however, it took hours to get the furniture uncovered and the rooms serviceable enough to even sit down in. 

Then there was the issue of food.

They’d stopped in the tiny town that Clint had spent his childhood in, at a Fareway that had seen better days. They got groceries and - luckily for Clint’s pervading sense of laziness - paper utensils, because the kitchen cabinets were tacky and the available dishes were… unsalvageable in Clint’s opinion. 

_He _wasn’t going to be the one to scrub the dirty, greasy film off of them, that was for sure. 

Natasha gave everything a wrinkled-nose look of disgust, but she helped clear all of it out, until they were able to collapse onto the musty-smelling couch with plates of Stouffer's lasagna and cups of ice water in exhausted relief. 

Then Clint realized they hadn’t bought shower supplies, there were probably no clean towels, not to mention soap or shampoo, and he gave a bone-weary groan. He’d have to go back to town. 

“Okay,” he said, dumping the dinner trash in the garbage and rinsing his hands, drying them on paper towels. “I can run back to the store for soap and shit, and we probably need towels and clean bed sheets, so make me a list and I’ll get going. There’s enough bedrooms for everybody, I think.”

There were. The old house had four bedrooms total, including the master Clint’s parents had shared, and everything about the house gave him a weird knot in his stomach that was some combination of nostalgia, grief, and anxiety. Clint’s childhood hadn’t been the best, to say the least, and he had mixed feelings about returning to his childhood home. His parents had died in a car accident - if you could call driving into a telephone pole while drunk as a skunk an _accident_ \- when he was eight, and then there’d been a series of foster homes for him and Barney, before they’d run away to join the circus when he was eleven. 

So he didn’t have a _ton_ of memories of the house, but he had enough that sleeping on his parents’ old bed with their old sheets was gonna be a no-go. 

Natasha pulled a yellowed sheet of paper from an aged, crumpled notebook out of a drawer Clint hadn’t even opened yet, and began scribbling out a list. A very specific list, including conditioner brand.

“Are you serious?” Clint asked, raising his eyebrows.

She tossed her hair over her shoulder with a sniff but didn’t answer him. He sighed again. 

Clint shoved his feet into his boots and grabbed his jacket on his way out the door to their rental car. That was another problem he was going to have to solve - they needed more permanent transportation. Clint was going to end up spending a good chunk of his squirreled away funds fixing this place up and establishing some kind of life here for James and Nathan, he was pretty sure. 

He had mixed feelings about that, too.

Was he even doing the right thing here? Helping the world’s premier assassin disappear, just because Clint had a soft spot for some chubby cheeks?

The thought was bothering him, but there was nothing he could do about it right now, if he even decided he _needed_ to do anything.

For all he knew, James would disappear in the dead of night and never be Clint’s problem again. 

Hell, _Natasha_ might do the same.

The fact that Clint found himself upset by the thought was, perhaps, the most worrisome part of the entire deal. 

The Fareway had an extremely limited selection of shampoo products _and_ bedsheets, but Clint was able to find sufficient quantities of everything plus the brand of conditioner Natasha had requested, so overall it was a successful venture. He also got towels, hand soap, and baby bath products for Nate, grabbing a basket of Johnson & Johnson on a whim. He paused in the baby aisle, overwhelmed with the sheer amount of _stuff_ and _choices_. Did Nate really need all of this shit?

He spotted a little rack of baby clothes, with a red _Ramones_ t-shirt prominently displayed.

Weird choice for a backwoods grocery store, but Clint wasn’t gonna pass up a golden opportunity. He snagged the shirt in a size that looked like it would fit the kid and tossed it in his cart, which was now filled to the brim with necessary household goods. And cleaning products. 

God this was going to be a nightmare. 

The cashier - the same one from earlier - raised her eyebrows at him as Clint began unloading his supplies. 

“Forget something?” she chirped, grinning. 

Clint gave her a tired smile. “House was in worse shape than we thought,” he admitted, digging his wallet out. 

“Oh? You new in town?”

Clint grimaced. He was so tired he’d forgot to keep his mouth shut. “Just moved into a house outside town. It’s been empty a while, from the looks of things.”

“Oh!” She dimpled up at him. “You mean the old Barton place.”

Clint blinked at her in surprise. “You know it?” he asked cautiously.

“Oh sure,” she waved a hand, kept scanning his stuff, “everyone knows it. It’s been empty for ages, ever since the parents died and the state took the boys off. I’m sure it’s a sight! If you need any work done, my brother has a handyman business.”

“Sure,” Clint said, automatically, “that’d be great. He got a card?”

She finished ringing up his purchases, the total in bright green numbers making him wince. He handed her his credit card without comment, and she ran it while answering his question. “Yeah, but I haven’t got one on me. His name’s Ryan, you can just ask at the hardware store, they’ll know how to get him if you need anything.”

“Okay, thanks,” Clint said, starting to load up his sacks of stuff. It looked like even more once it was piled back in the cart, towering over the edges. Jesus. How had he gotten himself into this?

**

It took a solid week to get the house into totally habitable condition. They opened the windows during the day despite the cold, keeping Nate bundled up in warm blankets and socks, and cranked the ancient furnace up at night, and Clint was already having nightmares about the gas bill when it came. The first things to go had been all the old linens, towels, and the disgusting dishes. Even James had wrinkled his nose at them, and then he’d taken a soapy washcloth and vinegar to the inside of the cabinets before he’d let Nat put new dishes inside. 

Clint happily handed off the master bedroom to James. It had an attached bath with a tub-shower combo that was good for James and the baby, and Clint discovered an old wooden rocking bassinet in the attic that he wrestled down for Nate.

Also, Clint was more than happy to retreat to his old childhood bedroom, even though the bed was only a double and his toes hung over the edge of it. It had its own tainted memories, times Clint had hid in the closet with his hands over his ears while his dad shouted, but for the most part it was a blank slate in Clint’s mind. Ripping down the old posters and throwing out most of the aged detritus inside helped a lot, along with sun-bleaching the mattress and putting fresh sheets down. And he was so fucking tired at the end of every day that it didn’t much matter where he slept. 

Natasha took what had been Barney’s room, similarly trashing everything in it. 

The fourth bedroom remained empty, with an old roll-top desk and chair, and odds and ends that had been shoved in there over the course of the years. Clint figured that could be sorted later, when Nate was older and needed a room of his own, maybe. 

In actuality, Clint wasn’t thinking too far into the future at all. Just to the next task: patch the roof, check the plumbing, replace the loose board on the stairs, reinforce the railing. The list of repairs the house needed seemed never-ending, to be honest, and it was a good distraction. Clint almost never had to think about just what the fuck he thought he was doing. 

Natasha forced Clint into town a half-dozen times with a list of things for her, the baby, the house, and James, until finally Clint strong-armed her into the truck with him so she could pick out her own damn winter gear. They drove further afield for that trip, a solid two hours from the house, which was bound to make James nervous as hell, but so far only Clint had ventured into the small town near the farm, and they all agreed that was for the best for now. Eventually they’d need to acclimate James to town, get him sorted with the stores and the shopping and a goddamn bank account, but Natasha needed to keep a low profile at all costs. 

Waterloo was bigger, busier, and much easier to go unnoticed in. Natasha shopped to her heart’s content, loading up enough bags to make Clint physically cringe. He almost - _almost _\- asked her just what she was going to do with all the stuff she was buying when she turned herself in to S.H.I.E.L.D., but for once his brain was fast enough to override his mouth. If it made her happy, what did he care? She had little enough to be happy about as it was. 

Clint did most of the shopping for James and Nathan, guessing at baby sizes and making slightly-more-educated guesses at James’ sizes and preferences. Clint tried to think what he’d need for a winter at the farm, cold and lonely as it was likely to be, and wound up with boots, parkas, thermals, sweatshirts, hats and gloves. He wondered what James was going to do about his arm in the summer, and then decided that was a future!Clint problem. Or a future!James problem. Someone else’s problem, either way. 

And how the hell fast did babies grow, anyway? Clint was pretty sure Nathan had got bigger just since Rome, and that was only six weeks ago. Baby clothes, to Clint’s utter delight, were sized by age, but to his utter chagrin, brands didn’t seem to agree on sizing. Feeling foolish, he went with nine and twelve month sized things, which looked much too big to his eye, but better too big than too small - the kid would grow into them eventually.

Natasha seemed subdued on the ride back, for all that she had delighted in running a probably-stolen credit card through every machine at every store they’d gone into, and she stared out the window morosely. 

Clint let the silence ride for about an hour before he couldn’t take it anymore.

“You alright?” he asked, quietly, speaking just over the radio, which was getting choppier and more interspersed with static the further out of the city they got. 

“I’m fine.” Her voice was short and clipped.

Clint hummed, not arguing. 

“I’ve never gone shopping for fun before,” she admitted after a few minutes. “It was… nice.”

He let the silence ride for a bit longer, but it seemed wrong to just let the depressing statement stand on its own. “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he finally settled on. He wanted to reassure her - wanted to offer that S.H.I.E.L.D. would probably let her out, eventually, or recruit her as they had Clint, but he also didn’t want to make promises he couldn’t keep. 

Clint couldn’t in all honesty say _what_ S.H.I.E.L.D. would want from her, once she was there.

She was giving up a lot to ensure James and Nathan stayed safe, and Clint couldn’t help but wonder why. 

“Hey can I ask you something?”

She turned to him with a raised eyebrow, which he took to mean he could ask, but that she might not answer.

That wasn’t anything new. 

“What’s the deal with James? You’re giving up a lot here, and you don’t even like the baby.”

Natasha snorted. “I like the baby fine,” she said, instead of answering his question. “I’m just not meant to handle children.”

“What does that mean?” Clint risked taking his eyes off the road for a second to look at her, and her face was a strange mixture of emotions he couldn’t begin to sort out.

“I was created to be a weapon, not a babysitter.”

“You can be anything you want,” Clint said. “You’ve got choices now.”

“Do I?” She went back to staring out the window.

And Clint-

Clint didn’t have an answer for that.

**

James was acting strange. 

Well, strange for a near-silent assassin that Clint barely knew. 

He kept having little… moments. Clint almost wanted to call them glitches, except he was a human and not a robot, despite the high-tech arm. But little instances where he stared off into the distance, his mind anywhere but the present, or where he paused in a task to stare at his hands as if he didn’t recognize them. More and more the accented drawl Clint had noticed on the ship crept back into his speech - dropped g’s and prolonged ‘aw’ for a’s - that Clint was starting to recognize as born-and-bred New Yorker, which made absolutely _no_ sense at all. 

James let his scruff grow out and his hair get longer and longer, and babied Nate to the point that even Natasha started commenting on it. 

“He’s just a baby,” James argued, giving her a narrow-eyed look after she’d made some kind of comment when James swooped in to grab the baby before he could crawl all the way to the staircase. 

“Just a baby,” she agreed, but the tone was frustratingly cryptic. 

There was something more going on that Clint was unaware of, and it rankled under his skin. Anytime he probed for more information, though, they both went disturbingly silent on the subject. Clint needed a break. 

“I’m heading to Chicago,” Clint announced over coffee one morning. “You all need more permanent identity papers than what got us here, especially if I’m gonna leave you and Nate here by yourselves.” The last was directed at James. “I’ve got a contact in the city that can get it all done before we have to go to S.H.I.E.L.D. - you got any preferences on names, or you wanna stick with what you have?” 

It was now or never, he figured. If they were gonna cut and run, it would be while he was gone.

Clint wasn’t sure if he hoped they did or didn’t.

“James Barnes,” James said, reluctantly. Like he was giving away some piece of his secrets, painfully relinquished, but there was nothing special about the name. Hell, it was probably one of the most common names in America. 

“Good choice,” Clint simply said. “Nice and generic.”

“Yasha,” Natasha said, miserably. 

James’ face was perfectly blank, no reaction to either of them.

“What about the kid?” Clint said. He’d got used to calling him Nathan or Nate, but it really wasn’t his call to make. 

James’ face spasmed at that, but settled back into something a bit more neutral. He swallowed hard a couple of times. “Nathan Grant is good,” he hesitated. “Barnes, too, I guess.”

Clint nodded, and glanced at Natasha. “I like mine as it is,” she said, smirking. “I’ve become accustomed to answering to it.”

“What about birth dates, places of birth, all that identity shit?”

“I like my new birthday too,” Natasha said, giving Clint a sly look, and he rolled his eyes. October 28th it was, he supposed. 

“1980?” he checked, and she shrugged a shoulder. 

That made her barely eighteen, but it did make her eighteen, which made Clint feel a bit better about the situation.

“Alright then, what about you two?”

“April tenth for Nathan,” James said. “March tenth for me.”

“What year?”

James shrugged. 

“How do you know the date but not the year?” 

“Pal, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Clint pinched the bridge of his nose. “You older or younger than me?”

James gave a sarcastic huff of laughter. “Older.”

He didn’t elaborate.

Clint downed the rest of his coffee, decided to throw a couple of years onto James’ birth year, and dropped the mug in the sink. “Okay, I’ll be back later tonight. Try to stay out of trouble.”

Chicago was bustling, packed with people going about their business, though it was nothing like New York City in the height of tourist season, either. Clint didn’t have any trouble finding his guy, who was still fronting a pawn shop on 61st street and dealing papers under the table. It wasn’t the first time Clint had gone to him for false identities, but it was the first time he needed paperwork for multiple people and a child. 

“What’s up, dude?” Dennis said, leaning an elbow on the counter. “This ain’t your usual.”

“Helpin’ a friend out,” Clint reluctantly admitted, their false documents, scraps of paper with assorted details, and a few passport photos he’d had done at the drugstore near the house.

He flashed a wad of cash at Dennis, who swept all of it off the counter into his hands, stacking it neatly. “Pleasure doin’ business with you,” Dennis told him, turning to go.

“Hey,” Clint stopped him. “Put a rush on it will ya? I’m only in town for the day.”

Dennis’ dark eyebrows rose until they were nearly hidden behind the dreads hanging over his forehead. “You’re not askin’ for much, are you? Alright, come back ‘round seven, I should have most of it for you. There’ll be a surcharge.”

Clint waved him off. Dennis had never missed an opportunity to make a buck and he hadn’t expected him to pass up on one now. “I’m good for it.”

Now Clint had to find something to do with himself for the next six hours. Easy, right. 

First things first, he went in search of pizza. Chicago was full of that deep-dish shit, but it didn’t take Clint long to find somewhere that served a decent pie. It wasn’t New York pizza, but it was still better than anything he’d had since before he left for Rome, and Clint managed nearly an entire pie by himself. He ordered two more to go and stowed them in the truck, figuring it was cold enough to keep them for his new housemates until he got home tonight. Which, given Dennis’ timeline, was going to be close to fucking midnight, assuming he was really done at seven. Clint thought about calling to check in, but the landline was unsecured, and he doubted either James or Natasha would pick it up anyway.

With that thought on his mind, Clint stopped by a Radio Shack and picked up a cordless house phone and digital answering machine, because they might not pick up, but he could at least leave messages in the future.

He deliberately didn’t think about the fact that they might not even be there when he got back. 

His next stop was a coffee shop because why the hell not. He hadn’t had anything except his own - or James’ - pitiful attempt at brewing coffee in the mornings for a while, now. And while Clint would drink anything hot, black, and loaded with caffeine, there was something to be said for a decent cup of Joe. 

Italy had spoiled him for it, so he ducked into the first shop he came to that wasn’t a friggin’ Starbucks, and got an espresso, nearly moaning when the taste hit his mouth. God, he’d missed good coffee.

He grabbed a bag of their weekly special grind on his way out the door, tossed it in the truck with the pizza, and wondered what else he could do with himself. 

Clint could only play tourist for so long, with no target to track and only time to kill. 

Eventually he ended up in an internet cafe, just a few blocks from Dennis’ shop, drinking coffee and paying out the nose for unlimited dial-up access. Using a backdoor he’d built into his own access to S.H.I.E.L.D., Clint began discreetly searching the Winter Soldier and Black Widow in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s databases. 

A lot of the information was above his clearance level, which surprised him, because the only agents above Clint’s level were Coulson and Fury, as far as he knew. Maybe Maria Hill. Clint had been with S.H.I.E.L.D. long enough, had established enough of a track record, that most of what wasn’t available to him was Eyes Only, or at the Director level. Only STRIKE team leaders - like Morse or Rumlow - had a similar clearance, and even then Clint was usually privy to more information than they got because Coulson trusted him with it. 

Fury, everyone knew, was being fast-tracked to Director, once Director Stoner retired. There was a betting pool on when it was going to happen, and Clint’s money was on the end of the year. He wondered if bringing in the Black Widow would fast track his retirement, so he could go out on a triumphant note. He made a mental note to call Bobbi and adjust his bet accordingly. 

The Soldier’s file credited him with nearly two dozen assassinations, going back over the last three decades. Some of the targets were deeply classified, but Clint also recognized a few names, and gave a low whistle at some of the distances the shots were taken at. He’d have to get James on a range sometime, compare techniques.

Clint shook his head at his own ridiculousness.

The Widow was a newer player, but just as deadly, mostly in close-quarters assassination. She had a reputation for fierce and dirty hand-to-hand, along with any type of up close and personal death. Poison, knives, garrotte - you name it, the Black Widow could handle it.

Again, Clint wondered what S.H.I.E.L.D. was going to do with her.

When his timer ran out, Clint erased his browser history, downed his now-cold coffee, and wandered back towards Dennis’ shop.

Only time would tell.

**

The paperwork was, as usual, flawless. The drivers’ licenses and passports even showed a bit of wear and tear, as though they’d been handled for years rather than newly minted. 

This was why Clint paid Dennis’ prices. 

“Thanks,” Clint said. “I threw an extra ten percent in for the rush.”

Dennis grinned at him. “Like I said, pleasure doin’ business with ya.”

Clint shot him a sloppy salute as he stepped out of the shop and Dennis locked up behind him. 

The drive back to Waverly was long, boring and he had to stop twice to stretch his back and wake himself up. He almost got a third cup of coffee, but figured he would want to sleep when he finally made it back to the house and got a Coke instead. 

Pulling up the driveway, Clint was surprised to realize the emotion in his chest was _relief_ when he noticed a light on in the kitchen and a broad figure at the small dining table there. He wouldn’t have been surprised if both Natasha and James had taken off while he was gone, and part of him couldn’t even blame them, but James was still sitting there, illuminated by a dim yellow light bulb.

Nathan was asleep on his shoulder. 

“Hey,” Clint whispered, shouldering his way inside and bending down to unlace his boots. 

James jerked his head in response, obviously unwilling to disturb the baby by responding. He held up one metal finger, and then eased up the stairs, easily avoiding the creaky third step. He was back less than a minute later, sans infant. 

“How’d it go?” he asked, setting a kettle Clint didn’t remember acquiring on the stove and turning the gas on. Behind him the fridge had a single photo on it, held up by a faded Chicago Bears magnet. It was the Polaroid from the cruise, with Natasha holding her hair back as she blew out a birthday candle, Clint and James both smiling and Nathan with his fist shoved in his mouth.

It looked wildly incongruous in the otherwise plain and empty house.

Clint held out the plain manilla envelope containing both his and Natasha’s new documents. And the baby. It had been a bit of a conundrum getting the baby a birth certificate that only had James’ name on it. Clint had eventually had to figure out how mothers who were giving up custody entirely did it and then filed the birth certificate at the courthouse with the mother’s name left blank. James dumped them into his hand, thumbing through the paperwork. He paused, briefly, on the passport with his own face on it, his hair pulled carefully back while he scowled at the camera.

Stuffing the papers back into the envelope, James kept half an eye on Clint. Behind him, the kettle whistled and James poured hot water into two mugs, bringing one to Clint at the table. It smelled sweet and vaguely spicy, and when Clint lifted it to his lips it was citrus and honey and the faintest hint of mint. He made a surprised sound. James smirked at him in response, but was soon back to broodily staring at the envelope. 

“Thanks,” he gruffly said, when the tea was cooled and the mugs were nearly empty. 

“You’re welcome,” Clint said. “I got some more stuff in the truck,” he added, desperate to escape the show of genuine gratitude. “Pizza and coffee and an answering machine so I can call and check in and you don’t gotta pick up the phone.”

James helped him unload the truck, so they only had to brave the biting November wind one time between them, and stored the pizza in the fridge and the coffee in the freezer.

“We’re gonna drink it long before it has time to go bad,” Clint pointed out. 

“Maybe,” James admitted.

He was proven right, because the next morning, Clint’s pager - the one Coulson only used for necessary contact, the one that had an unlisted number that wasn’t even in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files, buzzed with a request for check-in.

Their time at the farm had finally come to an end. 

**

Clint made it a point to drive a few hours away from the farm before calling Phil back with a pay-by-the-minute cell phone he picked up at a gas station on his way. 

“Status,” Coulson said by way of greeting. 

“Coming in hot with a package,” Clint told him, standing under a lone tree in the middle of nowhere, shivering in his boots. “Or not hot, as the current case may be.”

“A package? Your mission did not include parameters for package extraction.” Phil sounded both confused and concerned. 

“I rewrote the parameters,” Clint admitted, wincing. 

Phil took an audible breath, and Clint could picture the exact expression of exasperation that would be on the other man’s face. 

“You sent me after a kid, Phil,” Clint told him, wondering if Phil had had any idea what to expect.

There was a sigh on the other end of the line. 

They didn’t talk about Clint’s past much. Clint preferred to talk about his past _never_, but it did occasionally come up. They’d talked exactly one time, under the influence of a large quantity of whiskey and an op gone bad, about what exactly had led to Clint’s break from Trickshot and his brother and the circus, of the girl that Jacques had wanted him to kill, of Clint’s refusal and the subsequent injuries he’d sustained. 

That girl hadn’t been much younger than Natasha was now, and she’d been much older than Natasha had started out in the Red Room, which was apparently somewhere around infancy. 

Coulson would know Clint wasn’t going to shoot a kid if he didn’t have to. Clint didn’t have to explain. 

“ETA?” Coulson said, instead of what he wanted to do, which was undoubtedly ream Clint out for failing to follow orders.

Oh well, it wasn’t the first time. 

“Few days,” Clint said, looking around. “Kinda in the middle of nowhere right now.”

“I’ll brief Fury,” Phil assured him. “Oh and Clint?”

“Yeah?”

“I really hate when you do this.”

Clint snorted a laugh and hung up the phone. He ran it over with the truck before he turned around and headed back to the house. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very special shout-out to Mariana O'Connor, who graciously gave me permission to use a line from her fic _[Silhouette](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7956760/chapters/18197191)_ in this fic:
> 
> _BW: Names are more for the people saying them, than the people answering to them, wouldn’t you say?_ is pulled directly from there, because it is a perfect encapsulation of Natasha's character, in my opinion, and it has never been said better than she did. So thank you very much for generously allowing me to use it!

“What are you wearing?” Clint demanded, as Natasha walked into the room, carrying a small duffle, with her chin set like she was going before a firing squad. 

She was clad in skin-tight black, low cut in the front, that covered her from neck to ankle, along with boots. She had a utility belt around her waist and some kind of powered bracelets around her wrists. Her hair was pulled back and away from her face, like she was heading into a fight, but she looked more resigned than anything.

James snorted from the couch, where he was bouncing Nate on his knee. 

“Your outfit is worse than mine,” Natasha informed him without a trace of sarcasm. 

“What could possibly be worse than that?” Clint was afraid to know the answer. 

“It looks like a bondage fetishist’s dream - all leather straps and buckles and combat boots.”

Clint blinked between the two of them in utter horror. “You’re joking.”

“She’s really not,” James said, handing the baby a pacifier. 

Clint couldn’t picture it, didn’t really want to, and he determinedly focused his mind back on the current problem, which was Natasha’s… uniform.

“You can’t wear that.”

“It’s the Widow’s.”

“Do you want to turn yourself in, or do you want to get shot on sight?”

Natasha sighed and trudged back to the bedroom that she’d claimed for herself. Clint had caught a glimpse inside, a couple of days ago, and while it wasn’t what Clint would call ‘decorated’ it definitely bore the marks of someone other than Barney. Natasha had replaced the cheap sheets Clint had got at Fareway with some high-thread-count, Egyptian cotton situation in a soft, pale green, along with a thick comforter in an abstract pattern. She’d added a lamp, and there was a rug on the floor and Clint silently vowed to touch none of it, in the hopes that she’d get to come back at some point. If nothing else, Clint could pack it up and take it back to her at S.H.I.E.L.D. when she got her own room.

He was purposely not considering any alternatives to that.

She came back a few minutes later, dressed more sedately in jeans and a sweatshirt that Clint was pretty sure actually belonged to James, baggy as it was. She’d tied her hair up in a ponytail and she was wearing sneakers instead of the boots. She looked impossibly young. The duffle was bulging and lumpy now, and Clint assumed she’d stuffed what the Red Room called a uniform inside it.

“All set?” Clint asked, playing for time, but they did have a flight to catch. Clint had rented a car to drive them to Waverly, and he planned to leave it with the rental company when they got there so James would have the truck Clint had bought for however long they were gone. Or forever. Or whatever.

All the not thinking about the future that Clint had been doing was starting to catch up to him, and he could see it on James and Natasha’s faces as well. 

“Natalia,” James murmured, balancing Nate on his hip and holding out his left hand.

She sighed and walked over to take it, Clint catching the faint “Yasha” that she responded with. They were talking softly in Russian, and Clint stepped into the kitchen to give them some semblance of privacy. Years in the circus had given him a handle on half a dozen languages, Russian included, and he wasn’t interested in eavesdropping on what was obviously meant to be a private conversation. He started the coffee pot for lack of anything better to do, and because the noise of the faucet and the gurgle of the machine helped drown out the sound of their voices. 

They talked quietly for a few minutes, long enough for Clint to make himself a cup of coffee and gulp down about half of it, before James appeared around the corner, Nate chewing on his own fist. 

“She ready?” Clint asked unnecessarily. 

“Waitin’ outside,” James told him, his eyes dark as he scanned Clint’s face.

“I’ll do my best for her,” Clint promised.

James gave him a single, sharp nod, and then he disappeared into the bowels of the house, the creaky wood floors marking his passing.

With a deep sigh, Clint drank the remainder of his coffee and headed outside. 

Natasha was sitting in the passenger seat of the little two-door sedan, staring moodily out the window when Clint emerged into the bleak November sun. The pale, watery imitation of sunlight fit the mood, he figured, as he slid into the driver’s seat. 

They passed the entire ride to the airport in silence, Clint unwilling to break it with the bouncy pop hits of the radio, and Natasha making no move to do it herself. 

“I’m taking you directly to my handler,” Clint told her, as he maneuvered the car into the airport rental car lot. “He’s the best shot you’ve got at anything resembling a choice.”

Natasha blinked at him, some kind of muted surprise on her face. “I’ve made my choice,” she told him, and nothing about her words sounded bitter. 

She didn’t look old enough to sound so world-weary, though.

The Waverly airport was small and unhurried, not built for the volume of traffic that larger, more metropolitan areas got, and Natasha and Clint checked their bags and boarded without incident. The three hour flight passed in more silence, Natasha pretending to read one of James’ science fiction novels, and Clint dozing -- or at least attempting it -- in the seat next to her. When they got to La Guardia and retrieved their bags, Clint led Natasha out of the airport and hailed a taxi to Bed-Stuy. If he was going to call Phil, he was gonna do it from the comfort of his own neighborhood, at least. 

His apartment was stale and undisturbed when they arrived. Clint tossed his duffle on the couch with a sigh. 

“I gotta call Coulson,” he told Natasha, and she gave him a look. “I can call him now or we can wait until in the morning, it’s already-”

“Just get it over with,” Natasha told him, her voice blank, her face as neutral as he’d ever seen it.

She’d steeled herself for this moment, and Clint realized was only making it worse by delaying.

“Alright,” he told her.

Phil picked up on the second ring. “You’re back in New York?” he asked, as though Clint’s phone number wasn’t showing up on his caller I.D. 

“Bed-Stuy,” Clint told him. “I’ve got the package I promised you.”

“Bring it in.”

Clint’s gaze flicked over to where Natasha was curled up at the end of his couch, watching him with her steady green gaze. “You gonna meet me? I don’t wanna get shot walkin’ through the door.”

“I’ll meet you,” Phil assured him. “Come around to the east entrance. Do I need a welcoming party?”

“No,” Clint sounded as subdued as he suddenly felt. “No, just us is fine.”

“Call me when you’re here,” Phil said, and hung up.

“Alright,” Clint told Natasha, as he put the phone in its cradle, “it’s now or never.”

Natasha stood up with all the cool, deadly grace she’d carried in Rome, and in Madripoor, and that Clint hadn’t seen much of in her stance in the last few weeks. 

“Now works for me.”

Phil was waiting for them as promised, placid in the evening streetlamps, as unflappable as always. Clint had seen him stand in the middle of a firefight and calmly reload his weapon while bullets whizzed by in every direction. He guessed one teenaged girl - however deadly she was rumored to be - wasn’t going to phase him.

He keyed in the code for the unassuming door, waving Natasha and Clint in, raising one eyebrow at Natasha’s bag. 

“Do you prefer Natalia, or just the Widow?” he asked, sounding perfectly polite.

Natasha gave him an unreadable look, before flicking a glance at Clint and then back to Phil. “It’s Natasha, actually,” she told him, calm and collected as they walked the unusually empty hallways towards where Clint knew there were detention cells and interrogation rooms. He’d sat in a couple himself, early in his days at S.H.I.E.L.D., and once or twice after an op. “Natasha Romanoff.”

Something about that - about using the name he had put on her paperwork - struck Clint in the gut like a physical blow. 

Something about it must have shown on his face, but Phil’s gaze only flitted over his face briefly before returning to Natasha. 

“It’s good to put a name with the reputation, Miss Romanoff,” Phil told her. 

As they turned the corner that would take them down a narrow hallway to the interrogation rooms, Clint caught sight of a few stragglers - senior-level agents who were obviously keen to know why they’d been vacated from the premises. Amongst the not-at-all subtle grouping, he caught a glimpse of familiar pale blonde hair, her mouth smirking at him through the small crowd. Not far away but holding himself decidedly apart, was a different but still familiar scowl under a thrice-broken nose. Clint scowled in response. Bobbi and Rumlow never could keep themselves away from anything resembling drama, though for decidedly different reasons.

Great, the rumor mill was already grinding. 

**

Clint jumped as the locker room door banged open behind him, and Bobbi Morse strode in, pausing to lean on the wall nearby. 

“Barton,” she said, giving him a smirking once over. Clint rolled his eyes.

“This is the _men’s_ locker room,” he said tightly, tucking his towel in a little more firmly and overly conscious of the fact that he was pretty much naked and she was fully outfitted in the tac suit she wore on missions - minus the weapons, of course. 

“Mmm,” she agreed. “We fucked in the shower over there.” She jerked her chin at the stall Clint had just exited.

“Well, unless you’re here for a repeat performance, I’d like to get dressed.”

She settled more comfortably against the wall, arching an eyebrow. Clint sighed, and dragged his underwear up under the towel before tossing it onto the bench and reaching for his jeans. “What do you want, Bobbi?”

They’d had something of a whirlwind romance, a few years prior. Just coming off a long-term undercover op, they’d been young and drunk and stupid and thought they were in love, had got hitched in Vegas on a whim, and divorced just as quickly - so quickly, in fact, that it wasn’t common knowledge at S.H.I.E.L.D. because they hadn’t even had time to file the necessary paperwork.

Coulson knew, and Fury, of course, but it had been kept pretty quiet. Clint was pretty sure Bobbi was embarrassed, and for Clint it was like poking at a painful bruise. 

They made no secret of the fact they’d had a sexual relationship though, because they’d been caught in the locker room twice and the training room once. 

“Heard about your newest _recruit_,” she said, laughter dancing in her eyes. “Thought I’d come straight to the source, hedge my bets.”

“Win your bets, you mean,” Clint grumbled. He tugged the S.H.I.E.L.D. t-shirt over his head, muffling his words. “What’s your money riding on?”

They maybe had a gambling problem. 

“Water cooler gossip is the notorious Black Widow seduced you,” Bobbi said, and now her smile had a sharp edge to it. 

“She’s a literal _child_,” Clint said, offended. “C’mon, you know me better than that.”

The hard lines of her face softened. “Yeah,” she agreed. “The rest of the gossip mongers have even money on true love-” Clint snorted “-or that she’s a double agent. Well, Rumlow insinuated _you_ were a double agent, but I punched him in the mouth, so he’s not saying much of anything for a little while.”

Fuckin’ Rumlow. 

“I hate that guy,” Clint told her, unnecessarily. 

“Yeah, I know. It’s a universal feeling.”

That wasn’t strictly true. Rumlow had plenty of friends in S.H.I.E.L.D., they just weren’t the kind of friends Clint would choose for himself, or ask to watch his back. Not that Clint had a ton of friends himself. 

“She defected,” Clint told Bobbi, a peace offering since he hadn’t seen or spoken to her since his return nearly a week ago, when they usually met up for beer and pizza and decompression when either of them came off a long op. “I offered her the choice and she took it.”

“Sounds like you,” Bobbie agreed, and finally levered herself off the wall to walk closer. She reached up, turning his face this way and that, as though checking his veracity, or checking him for injuries, Clint wasn’t sure. “You always were a soft touch.”

Clint shook her hand off. “Fuck off,” he told her, half-heartedly. 

“Next time,” she said, lightly, turning to go. “Be careful,” she threw over her shoulder, “don’t get your heart broken, Hawkeye.”

“Hard to get it broken when it belongs to you, Mockingbird,” Clint told her, which was a standard running joke between them, one Clint used to hide the fact that his heart had been a little bruised by how easily Bobbi had got over him. They weren’t good together, Clint forever chasing the adrenaline of the next mission, and Bobbi looking for someone more reliable, who forgot birthdays and anniversaries with less frequency. 

Clint was a great work partner, good under fire and at his best under pressure, but he was a terrible romantic partner and they both knew it. 

He snorted to himself as the door closed behind her.

Him and the Black Widow, what a joke. 

**

It was not as funny a joke three days later, when he’d had to endure three days of hallway whispers and snickers, Rumlow’s friends’ snide looks and even snider remarks, and Coulson’s pitying glances. 

Natasha had been isolated from the whole of S.H.I.E.L.D. except for Coulson, Fury, and Director Stoner. Clint had asked to see her exactly once, and been rebuffed so firmly that it actually left his ears stinging. So he’d taken to uncharacteristically hanging around headquarters, working out in the communal gym and running and re-running the obstacle course. He’d also broken his own records on the range, just for fun. 

Clint was getting bored and antsy, and being around the compound was only adding fuel to the rumor mill fire. Bobbi was enjoying it, because she was looking forward to collecting on her ‘Clint is a sucker for a good sob story’ bet, but everyone else was eyeing him with more and more suspicion. 

He was in the gym, beating a punching bag into submission when Rumlow and a couple of his buddies showed up. Rumlow was still sporting the greening remains of a bruise on his left jawline, remnants of Bobbi Morse’s well-intentioned right hook. He gave Clint a look of disgust. 

“You got a problem, Brock?” Clint asked, wrapping his arms around the bag to stop it swinging. He leaned against it and took deep, cleansing breaths. 

“Nothing a little housecleaning wouldn’t fix,” he sneered. 

Clint took a couple of steps away from the bag, bouncing on his toes to loosen muscles that wanted to stiffen up after his workout, He rolled his neck and shoulders. Rumlow paced a little closer too, waving his hand at his buddies when they moved to follow.

Clint debated. Now wasn’t the time or the place to get into it with Rumlow, but backing down from such an obvious challenge wasn’t going to win him any brownie points in the ranks, either. And Clint wasn’t exactly known for handling things strictly to regs. He was just about to open his mouth and see what fell out when the training room door opened and shut with a precise, pointed _click_. 

“Gentlemen,” Coulson said, wearing his usual bland smile. 

“Agent Coulson,” Rumlow responded, easing into a more relaxed stance.

“Phil,” Clint said, just to be a dick. 

“Hawkeye, with me. Agents, as you were.”

Clint followed Phil out of the room and down the hall towards what he knew was a briefing room. He hoped to god Coulson was sending him out on another mission-

“Take a break,” Coulson said, dropping Clint’s duffle bag - the same one that he kept in his quarters at S.H.I.E.L.D.- into his arms. “You’ve earned it.”

“What?” Clint said, dumb and lost.

“You’re causing me problems,” Phil told him, seriously. “Stop hovering - the Widow is going to be months in deprogramming and vetting, and you hovering like a nanny at a sickbed is causing… strain amongst the other agents. Take. A. Break. Consider it time off for good behavior. God knows you’ve never had any before.”

“What if I don’t want to take a break?”

“Then I’ll suspend you.”

Clint stared at him, open-mouthed with shock. 

“With pay, of course.”

Shutting his jaw with a click, Clint stared some more, unable to formulate a single reply. 

“Look Barton, I don’t know what you did to convince that girl to come here. Frankly, I don’t want to know, and I don’t intend to ask. She says you offered her a choice and she took it. If that’s the whole story - fine. If it’s not, that’s fine too. We’re going to keep her here until we’re sure she’s not a sleeper agent or a turncoat, and after that we’ll see. In the meantime, you need some time and some distance from the situation before you compromise yourself any further than you already have.”

“I’m not compromised!” Clint denied, feeling his face flush, hot with a strange combination of anger and something else that felt a little too similar to shame. 

“Clint,” Phil said, more gently, “you haven’t spent this much time at headquarters since we recruited you from Carson’s, and even then you did it under lock and key and extreme protest.”

Okay, maybe Clint was a little bit compromised.

Just a small amount.

“Fine,” Clint ground out, taking the bag by the handles. “May I shower first, _sir_, or would you like me off the property immediately?”

Coulson rolled his eyes. “I want you wheels up by morning, Barton. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

Clint opened his mouth to ask if he could see Nat before he left, then swallowed the words back down. Some semblance of sense reminded him that it would only dig his hole deeper.

“Don’t call, don’t write, it’s like you don’t even like me anymore Phil.” Clint tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. 

Phil reached out and squeezed Clint’s shoulder, as warm and friendly as he ever was. “Good work, Barton. Take care. Enjoy your vacation.”

And that was how Clint found himself back on a plane to Waverly only a week after he’d arrived in New York. He knew if he hung around, even if he went back to Bed-Stuy, he’d only end up back at S.H.I.E.L.D. and probably eyeball deep in the middle of the fight with Rumlow that Phil had interrupted. At least in Iowa he’d be distracted.

Hopefully James wouldn’t shoot him on sight, either. 

Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division

Transcript

INTERVIEW DATE: November 22, 1998

INTERVIEW OF: Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widow, AKA Natalia Alianova, other aliases unknown (BW)

INTERVIEWED BY: Coulson, Phil, Agent in Charge (PC)

REVIEWED BY: Fury, Nicholas J., Deputy Director

PC: It is presently 1823 hours, 22 November 1998. Agent Phil Coulson currently at the New York City division of the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division to interview the foreign agent known as Black Widow. No one else present in the room. The interviewee has declined legal representation. Interviewee arrived on the premises apparently of her own free will, accompanied by Agent Clinton Barton, callsign Hawkeye. 

PC: State your name for the record.

BW: Natasha Romanoff

PC: Your real name, please.

BW: Black Widow

PC: _[sighs]_

BW: Names are more for the people saying them, than the people answering to them, wouldn’t you say?

PC: Where did you get the name ‘Natasha Romanoff’?

BW: It’s the closest thing to a real name I’ve got. Agent Barton provided me with the documents when he escorted me to S.H.I.E.L.D. Before that I was just Black Widow. Sometimes Red Room would provide me with aliases, but not identity. There is no individual identity in Red Room. I’m just a tool, only as useful as I am effective. 

PC: And you defected with Agent Barton in Madripoor, is that correct?

BW: Yes.

PC: Why?

BW: _[pauses]_ I’ve got a lot of red in my ledger. I’d like to wipe it out. 

PC: You are aware that Agent Barton was sent to kill you?

BW: I am.

PC: And you convinced him not to?

BW: No. 

PC: Why didn’t he complete his mission objective?

PC: I’m sorry, as this is audio only, you’ll have to speak out loud. A shrug won’t do.

BW: I couldn’t say. He made a different call. 

PC: And that convinced you to join S.H.I.E.L.D.?

BW: No. 

PC: Why are you here then?

BW: He offered me a choice. 

PC: What choice?

BW: It doesn’t matter what choice. He offered a choice - I don’t get choices. 

PC: _[pause]_ And you’re choosing to defect to S.H.I.E.L.D.?

BW: Yes. I have skills, experience. Knowledge. I’m willing to exchange them.

PC: For what?

BW: The ability to make choices. 

**End Transcript**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who has stuck through to the end of this:
> 
> Sorry for the cliffhanger!
> 
> No, really, I am sorry. But it was a good stopping point, the main bits of this arc are resolved, and I've established relationships. There are 5 arcs total in this universe, and they're all kind of like this - mini story arcs within a larger universe. I hope you enjoy them as this progresses!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting and encouraging me. This is a fic that is very near and dear to my heart, and it means a lot to get so much positive feedback on it. The Winterhawk fandom is always generous with the encouragement and commentary, and this has been no exception. Thanks for giving this a shot. 
> 
> Part two will be going up soon, and most of your questions will be answered there, and then there will be more questions XD. 
> 
> Finally, a million years of thanks to Nny, who has beta read this fic for me from the very start, who always gives me just the right amount of compliment sandwich to make me feel like the story isn't complete crap, but still manages to improve it exponentially with a few well-placed words. Love you pumpkin!

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to Clara who has listened to me imagine/reimagine/talk through this universe in it's entirety for literal months. Thank you for supporting my crazy ideas, always, and this one in particular. If anyone knows what a labor of love this has been, it's her.
> 
> To everyone **else** who has had to listen to me ramble about this fic, I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry. Especially Amy, Nny, Lissa, and Steph. I love you guys, thanks for humoring me at all times, you're the best.
> 
> The most thankful and humble appreciation to Nny, who beta read this so well and really helped make sure it is the best fic that it can be, committed so much commacide, and helped me make my thoughts more cohesive, more concise, and more thoughtful. Thank you sweetheart, you have been a godsend.


End file.
